


The Thing That Should Not Be

by notmanos



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Tranquilizers, Best Librarian Ever, Case Fic, Cthulhu Mythos, Ghosts, Lovecraftian, Team Free Will, What the Hell Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:40:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4272168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmanos/pseuds/notmanos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean take on what seems to be a simple case of a local sea monster, only to discover something ancient and nasty taking over a small Oregon town. The problem is, they're trapped with no idea how to fight the creeping menace, which is getting to them too. (Circa season 5 timeline.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Space Remains

 

**_1 – Space Remains_ **

 

 

A heavy thud brought Dean back to full consciousness, and before he even focused his eyes, he was sitting up, gun extracted from beneath his pillow and aimed out at the room.

 

When his eyes finally focused, he was staring down the barrel at Sam, who was crouched on the floor, frozen in the process of picking up his laptop bag. “Jumpy much?” he wondered.

 

Dean let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and put his gun on the nightstand. “Kinda hard not to be, isn’t it? There’s only an apocalypse pending.”

 

Sam shrugged, straightening up with his laptop. “Then maybe you’d be up to this. I think we have a case.”

 

“Oh yeah?” He dry washed his face before stumbling to the bathroom, trying to pretend that his four hours of sleep had been restful. Usually he didn’t have a lot of nightmares, but last night he did. He couldn’t remember most of them, just the general feeling of upset that left his stomach tied up in knots. It felt like he’d swallowed a mouth full of cement.

 

Sam spoke up, so Dean could hear him over the water running in the sink. “Up the coast, a couple of hours from here, the city of Point Windsor, Oregon had the body of a fisherman wash up completely divested of all organs. This coincides with the return of sightings of the local legend sea monster known as Winnie.”

 

Dean spit out a mouthful of toothpaste. For some reason, even the toothpaste tasted sour this morning. “A sea monster? Really?”

 

“As I said, it’s just a local legend. But it hasn’t been sighted in ages. And that hollow fisherman is undoubtedly strange.”

 

He had to give him that. Also, it would be nice to deal with something non-apocalypse related. Dean knew he was tired of all this angels and demons, Lucifer and Michael shit. Sam probably was too. “Okay. Point Windsor it is.”

 

It was good to have a plan. Dean hadn’t realized how much he missed that until now.

 

**

 

The drive to Point Windsor was uneventful, and both Dean and Sam were happy to let the radio fill in the silence. What was there to say? They were supposedly fated to act as meat suits for Lucifer and Michael, and bring on the apocalypse by killing each other, or at least one of them. Fate could go suck a bag of dicks as far as Dean was concerned, but hey, no one had asked him.

 

But they’d just passed the official “Welcome to Point Windsor” sign, with a lighthouse and a leaping cartoon fish on it, all big eyes and smiles, when the radio fuzzed out. The sky, which had been clear, suddenly darkened with gray clouds. Sam glanced out the passenger window. “Is this weird?” Dean wondered.

 

Sam shrugged. “It’s Oregon. This close to the coast, the weather can be pretty mercurial.”

 

“You say that like I know what it means.”

 

The radio fuzzed back to life, but Murder City Devils had been replaced by what sounded like hardcore dance music, a lot of thumping, repetitive bass. Dean couldn’t snap the radio off fast enough. “So, big raver community up here?”

 

“If you don’t like fishing, there might not be a lot else to do,” Sam replied. At least he was in a good mood.

 

Also, Sam probably had a minor point. Driving in, the town looked picture postcard quaint, with lots of rustic clapboard, and no building looking like it was particularly recent, at least not this close to the water. It looked as sleepy and boring as all hell. There was a lighthouse, a black striped white tower that rose on a narrow spit of land that reached about twenty feet into the main harbor. Dean couldn’t guess how tall it was from here, or if it even worked anymore. Maybe because it was technically daytime, no matter how overcast it was, the light wasn’t currently on.

 

They found a motel called Shoreline, which was a bit of false advertising, as it was a few blocks from anything resembling a shore. But it was so quiet, Dean guessed this was not tourist high season. In fact, the Impala was only the third car in the parking lot, and he wondered if they were the only guests here.

 

They changed into their fed suits, picked out suitable IDs, and headed for the local cop shop, which, due to the size of the town, also had the coroner’s/M.E.’s office right next door. It was a one stop shop for official murder and mayhem. Made their jobs easier.

 

The town Sheriff was one Martin Appleby, a guy who could have been a stunt double for Sam Elliott if he ever came down with malaria. He was nearly as tall as Sam, but he weighed maybe forty pounds less, making him look gaunt and positively skeletal, his tobacco yellowed skin pulled taut over his bony frame. He was rocking an impressive gray walrus ‘stache and matching sideburns, as well as long, wavy silver hair he wore back in a ponytail. Dean thought he might have been the first hippie Sheriff he’d ever met.

 

He had a brisk, strong handshake, and even though he wondered why Fish and Wildlife would concern themselves with a dead fisherman, he seemed eager to have anyone else take this weirdo case off his hands.

 

Appleby led them over to the coroner’s office, after admitting that their M.E. was also the local doc, Doctor Olivia O’Brien, who was currently working at her clinic. He gave them directions to her place, and then left them alone.

 

“Pretty laid back in these parts,” Dean noted, opening a refrigerated corpse drawer.

 

Sam put on a pair of latex gloves, and shrugged. “Small town.”

 

Still, didn’t it seem way too easy? Or was this just more of his own paranoia? He wasn’t honestly sure, and wasn’t up to asking Sam for his opinion yet.

 

The fisherman in the drawer had been named Paul Graham, and had been a lifelong resident of Point Windsor. He was divorced with no kids, and had had a very average life, at least as far as Sam could dig up. He was forty five, thirty pounds overweight, and looked so pale he was almost translucent. Except he looked strangely flat, at least from the neck down. “How long was he in the water?” Dean asked, as he put on latex gloves of his own. Sam was the expert at looking into corpses, but he knew he had to be ready to assist.

 

“Not long. Maybe a couple of hours at most.” Sam did the slightest double take looking at Graham’s collapsed chest. “That’s weird.”

 

It quickly got weirder. Sam used a scalpel to open Graham up again, retracing the Y incision of Doctor O’Brien, and he open the flaps of skin to reveal … Nothing. Absolutely nothing. “Wow,” Dean remarked. “You know, when you said he was hollowed out, I didn’t quite believe you.”

 

Sam’s brow furrowed in consternation, as he opened up Graham all the way to his pelvis. He didn’t even have intestines. “What the hell..? Even his ribcage is missing.”

 

Dean had somehow overlooked that, but yes, it was. Graham was essentially a skin suit with a spine and a head. Not a lot of blood either. Dean wondered if his junk was intact beneath the sheet, but he really didn’t want to know. “What would do this?”

 

“Damned if I know,” Sam admitted. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Sam put the scalpel down, and picked up a clipboard that was sitting on a nearby shelf. “O’Brien left her findings out.”

 

“We should have read those first.”

 

“Legs and head intact, torso completely empty. No bites or cuts visible; method of internal organ extraction unknown. Cause of death unknown.” Sam put the clipboard down, and frowned down at flattened Graham.

 

“I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say being gutted like a fish was what killed him.”

 

“Help me turn him over.”

 

Dean raised his eyebrows. “Why? Should I go get a spatula?”

 

“There has to be some kind of mark. Organs and intestines and a ribcage don’t just disappear. There has to be some sign of what occurred.”

 

Even though he was super light, Graham was also kind of squishy, which made hefting him up gross. It didn’t help that his legs were now the heaviest part of his body, and it felt like his upper half just wanted to tear off, like a paper doll attached to concrete. There were no marks on his back, besides what looked like a mole that could have been melanoma, and none on his legs either. Sadly, Dean discovered his junk had indeed gone missing (now there was a visual he’d need to drink away), but as Sam disgustingly reported, it didn’t look torn or cut off; it was just gone.

 

Having exhausted possibilities in the lower half of the body, Sam retrieved a bone saw from O’Brien’s equipment cupboard, and sawed off the top of Graham’s skull. Dean was only mildly surprised to find his skull was as hollow as the torso. “What the fuck?” Sam exclaimed, shining his penlight into the empty space where the man’s brain used to be.

 

“Is there any chance O’Brien removed it?” Dean asked, taking a shot in the dark.

 

Sam shook his head. “I don’t see why. You’d think she’d have made a note of it.” He checked the clipboard again, in case he missed something. Since he put it back down without comment, Dean assumed there was no _‘P.S.: Took out brain with an ice cream scoop’_ in the notes.“How could something remove all of a man’s organs – and ribcage – and not leave a single mark?”

 

Dean scratched his head. “Could something have liquefied his organs?”

 

“What?”

 

“Damned if I know. I’m just thinking out loud.”

 

Sam looked in the hollow cavity of his skull again. “There had to be an opening of some sort, assuming there was no liquefaction.”

 

Dean almost felt gross suggesting this, but someone had to say it. “What if they used his, um, available holes?”

 

Sam gave him a horrified glance. “What, you think they yanked his ribcage through his mouth?”

 

“Or … someplace else.”

 

Sam shuddered. “Ugh. You’d think there’d be tearing or something … hey, wait  a sec. You got a light on you?”

 

Dean pulled out his flashlight and trained it where Sam had his light, on the opposite side of the interior of Graham’s skull, close to the right ear. It was kind of hard to see, because there was a very light film of blood in the interior, but with so much light, Dean saw what Sam had noticed. It was an impression of a tiny circle, no bigger than a nickel. “What the hell is that?”

 

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. He pulled out his phone, and took a picture of the mark. “I can send it to Bobby, see if he has any ideas.”

 

Outside, Dean heard a distant rumble of thunder. Boy, the weather turned ugly fast around here. They put Graham back they way they found him, more or less, and covered the mess with the sheet before sliding the drawer shut. Sam peeled off his gloves, and wrote a note on the clipboard. Presumably he was alerting O’Brien to the missing brain.

 

Dean threw his own gloves in the garbage, and with Sam busy elsewhere, he allowed himself a moment to shudder. Goddamn, that was gross. He’d seen a lot of gross things in his life, but that was definitely up there.

 

The lights flickered as thunder rolled in, louder now, almost directly overhead. Sam checked his phone, and asked, “You getting any reception?”

 

Dean checked. He had no bars at all. “Nope.” It was that second the power died, leaving them in a darkened morgue.

 

Sam heaved a sigh. “This figures somehow, doesn’t it?”

 

“Yeah, our luck’s been fantastic lately.” At least it wasn’t a long trip to the door. But when Dean pushed it open, the wind slammed it against the wall, and the rain blew into his face almost sideways. It wasn’t so much a downpour as it was a monsoon. “Son of a bitch,” Dean spluttered, holding his arm up in a futile gesture to protect him from some of this storm.

 

“Goddamn it,” Sam said. He then nudged Dean’s arm, and asked, “What’s that?”

 

It took Dean a moment to blink enough rain from his eyes to see what Sam was referring to. The wind and rain had already turned the parking lot into a shimmering pond, but there was an awful lot of shimmering considering the low light.

 

And a flash of lightning revealed all. It wasn’t just rain pelting down from the sky. It was tiny silver fish, no bigger than a pinky, and black see through tadpoles, along with tiny frogs, who hopped away, as dazed and confused as the humans watching them fall from the clouds.

 

“This is an omen, right?” Dean asked. “Have we walked into something here?”

 

“I dunno,” Sam said, but he sounded unsure of his own denial.

 

Considering how fantastic their luck had been, Dean was sure it was sign of something big and ugly. Goddamn it, even cases had to be needlessly complicated nowadays.


	2. Half-Lit

 

**_2 – Half-Lit_ **

 

Just crossing the parking lot to the Impala turned out to be a chore.

 

The wind gusted off the water like a hurricane, and was cold enough to bite deep. And this was before you counted in trying to avoid stepping on alive things. Perhaps that was the most perplexing – there were so many live things. If they rained down, wouldn’t you think some would be dead? But as far as Dean could tell, most were alive. There were silver fish and tadpoles swimming in puddles, and the frogs all hopped off to greener pastures.

 

As soon as they were in the car, and had wrestled the doors shut against the driving wind, they were beyond soaked. They were drenched, and Dean knew there was no point in worrying about getting water on the seats, because he was probably going to have to Shop Vac about an inch or two of rain off the floorboards. The water was just sheeting down the windshield, and he wondered if this was what being in a submarine was like.

 

“Goddamn it,” Sam said, wiping the rain from his face. His hair was all plastered down and dripping, and unkind comparisons to drowned gerbils occurred to Dean, but honestly he was too pissed off to make them. “This weather feels a little … apocalyptic.”

 

“Ya think?” Dean said, squeezing his own hair to see how much water came out. A shocking amount. “This and No Organs Graham  in there adds up to something really fucked up. I thought we were gonna work a case like old times, you know. Would it have been so hard to have been a shapeshifter or something?”

 

“Woulda been nice.”

 

The wind was so strong Dean could even feel it rocking the car. And the Impala was fucking heavy; having worked on it all these years, he knew it wasn’t some fiberglass framed sports car. The force necessary to get a reaction out of the Impala was formidable. He started the car, almost surprised the engine was working in this deluge, and drove back to the motel. It was barely two miles, and it felt like they were under siege the whole way.

 

The motel parking lot also had fish, tadpoles, and frogs in it. Dean avoided them as best he could, but would have given up if stepping on slimy things wasn’t disgusting. They had no power at the motel either. All they could do was wait out the storm.

 

Despite this, they had stuff. Nobody could say the Winchesters weren’t prepared. They had camping lanterns they set up in the room so they could at least see where they were walking, and while Dean was changing into something dryer, Sam was looking through the files he had saved on his laptop. He didn’t have a lot, but he had a few he saved before they ended up in the middle of this place.

 

“According to legend, Winnie was supposed to be the Pacific Ocean equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster,” Sam reported. “Although most people said it was just an off course whale that got too close to shore, and was visually misinterpreted by local fishermen.”

 

“Let me guess. They were so drunk, they probably saw a two headed beast in a whale tail.”

 

“You’re probably not far off. The last “official” sighting of the creature was supposedly in 1972, by the lighthouse keeper, Edmund Jacobs.” Sam was quiet a moment, and then made a noise that Dean knew meant something bad.

 

“What?”

 

“Jacobs committed suicide two weeks later, by throwing himself off the lighthouse.”

 

Dean came out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. It wasn’t working super well. “So we’ve come to creepshow central, is that what you’re telling me now?”

 

Sam shrugged. He was actually sitting on the bed an arm’s reach from his laptop, so he didn’t drip on it. “There’s a library in town. I wonder if it’s still open.”

 

“I just got dry.”

 

“You can stay here, see if you can get a hold of Bobby. I want to see if I can get a better grasp of this town.”

 

That actually sounded good to Dean. Some alone time wouldn’t go amiss here, especially considering how weird and stressed out things had been lately. But he still couldn’t shake his lingering dread and paranoia. “Should we split up?”

 

Sam scoffed, getting up and shrugging on his rain jacket. “I’ll stay away from the harbor. The library’s only a couple of blocks away. Besides, I’m never really alone, am I?” Sam briefly flashed him his gun before he tucked it inside his coat.

 

Sam wasn’t a little kid anymore. He could take care of himself. (Lucifer said he said yes in Detroit. What was going to drive him to say yes to the Devil? No, goddamn it, that was just Zachariah fucking with him, being a total dick. As angels were generally wont to do. Except for Cass. Most of the time.) Dean checked to see if his phone was working yet – no – but said, “If you’re not back in two hours, I’m calling out the Coast Guard.”

 

Sam smiled faintly at his stupid joke. “This keeps up, I’m sure they’ll have their hands full.”

 

As soon as Sam left, Dean tried the land line phone that still existed in this motel, but it was the same as it had been since they came back from the cop shop: dead. The electricity wasn’t back either, and the rain was lashing the windows like skeletal hands lazily slapping the glass. It was actually startling when Dean glanced at his watch and saw it was only two o’clock. It was so dark he would have sworn it was midnight.

 

There was a bar down the street, and Dean decided to brave the weather and have a look. If he got lucky, maybe he’d find an old timer in there desperate to tell stories about the weird goings on down at the harbor.

 

Once Dean struggled outside, he was glad to find the winds had died down a little bit, and the only thing falling from the clouds now was water. It was a fuckton of water, but it was an improvement over frogs.

 

The bar was called the Dive (cute) according to its sign, and Dean was not surprised to find it had a nautical theme, with old fishing nets hanging from the ceiling and various life preservers hanging on the back and side walls. It just needed a hook handed pirate, and it would have been a cheesy seafood restaurant. But with the lights out here as well, the bar was lit by candlelight, making it a thousand times creepier. The candles were all red and white pillars, some hastily stuck in empty liquor bottles, but it made the shadows as thick and tenacious as oil.

 

The bartender was a guy with a shaven head, a nose ring, and an elaborate sleeve tattoo on his right arm that seemed to involve lots of sharks and octopi. He was solidly built. A little chunky, but it was that hard fat, the kind a fighter might build up as a defense. Dean didn’t need to see his scarred knuckles to know he was no stranger to scrapping. The funny thing was they seemed to instantly size each other up in the same way, one fighter recognizing another. This could be good or bad, depending on how things went. But Dean gave him a respectful nod as he took a seat at the bar. “Whiskey neat.”

 

“Shoulda guessed,” he said, pulling out a bottle from beneath the bar. “You’re new around here.”

 

“Just passing through. Seems like a … quiet little town.”

 

The bartender shrugged a single shoulder, pouring him his glass of whiskey. “That’s one way to put it.”

 

He wasn’t giving an inch. He wasn’t overly hostile, but he wasn’t being super friendly either. Dean wasn’t sure if he was keeping him at arm’s length because of the fighter thing or not. Maybe he was just naturally taciturn.

 

He sipped his whiskey, and looked around the bar. The flickering flames made the shadows move, almost breathe, and sometimes he was sure he’d see someone at a back booth, only to have the light move and reveal nothing at all. The first couple of times this happened, Dean chalked it up to an optical illusion, but them he saw movement out of the corner of his eye that seemed to cease and disappear the moment he looked at it head on.

 

The hair on the back of his neck was now standing up, and he felt a slight chill. What the fuck was this? Dean drank his whiskey like he hadn’t noticed anything, and the bartender went back to polishing glasses that didn’t need polishing. His black t-shirt was so tight it might have been his girlfriend’s that he put on by mistake. “You gotta working phone in here?” Dean asked, as shadows once again shifted in the corner of his eye. Sometimes he could almost make out hands reaching out of the dark.

 

The bartender shook his head, making his gold nose ring glint in the candlelight. “When the power goes down, we lose all phone service.”

 

“Wow, the grid’s that ancient, huh?”

 

“Yeah.” The bartender started polishing the bar, even though its battle scarred wood would never be smooth and shiny. As he polished a spot near Dean, he whispered, “If you run now I might be able to hold them off.”

 

Holy shit. He swirled the whiskey in his glass, and whispered back, “Are they ghosts?”

 

The bartender’s eyes were a clear hazel, and he saw surprise in them. “I think so. Most of the time they’re quiet, but today they’re … hungry.”

 

“Start pouring salt. Make a circle, stand in it, and don’t move.” Dean looked out of the corner of his eye as he gulped down the rest of his whiskey. “Got anything made of iron?” He then tapped his empty glass on the bar, as if requesting a refill. Which he was. No ghosts were going to keep him from getting his drink on.

 

The bartender glanced around as he refilled Dean’s glass. “I think the saber behind me is iron.”

 

Dean saw it. It was yet another part of the bar’s nautical theme. “Get in the circle, then toss it to me. I’ll do the rest.” The bartender’s look was dubious, but Dean threw him a deceptively confident wink. He was sorry he left the rock salt ammo back at the motel, but that was always a temporary solution at best. He needed to burn a buttload of bones to get rid of these assholes.

 

He gulped down his second glass as the bartender poured out a salt circle behind the bar. The ghosts either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Dean was starting to hear distant whispers that could have been the wind in the eaves if he didn’t know better. Sometimes he could almost make out a word, but it would slide right past the edge of coherence. Sometimes they were just syllables, divorced from all context. He dug out money for the drinks and dropped it on the bar.

 

As soon as the bartender stepped in the circle, he grabbed  the old dueling saber off the wall, and tossed it to Dean, who caught it and instantly swiveled on his stool, chopping a shadow in half as it came up behind him.

 

The ghosts were angry now. The flames were blown out all across the bar as he began blindly swiping at shadows, feeling cold air and ghostly sighs as he sliced through them, before he was shoved violently and collided painfully with a table, going over the top of it and taking it down. Dean still lashed out as he hit the floor, and got a ghost for his trouble.

 

He scrambled to the door, cutting through everything in his way, and his attempt to keep a running tally of ghosts he was temporarily banishing was an immediate bust. It was like he was blindly chopping through a forest of ghosts, which was pretty much precisely what he was doing. He felt ice cold fingers graze the back of his neck, trail down his arm, but he was able to avoid violence beyond the original push.

 

Dean got the outer door open, letting in minimal light and a lashing of rain, but that was enough to make whatever ghosts were left back off. Maybe they finally saw the saber and knew what it meant, or he’d temporarily banished enough to make them worry. “Do you know where they’re buried?” Dean asked.

 

The bartender, who still hadn’t moved from his circle, made an all encompassing gesture with his hands. “At sea. This bar is made from the reclaimed wood of the Carlisle, which sunk in ’22.”

 

Fan-fucking-tastic. The only way to banish the spirits would be to burn down the bar. “Can you get out of here okay?”

 

He nodded. “I think they think I’m a crew mate. They leave me alone.”

 

Maybe it was the tattoos. “I’m at the Shoreline,” Dean told him. “If you want a permanent solution to the problem, let me know. But only if you don’t mind losing the bar.” He tossed him the saber, and backed outside, into the warm afternoon rain.

 

So, great. This town had multiple issues. And he suddenly thought that maybe he should join Sammy at the library after all.

 

**

 

The town library (and historical society) was a small building that looked like it had once been something else, but Sam couldn’t quite decide what. A private residence, perhaps.

 

Inside it was crammed with shelves full of books, new, old, and positively ancient – they looked like they’d crumble to dust if touched. There was a single librarian behind the main counter, a slender, severe looking elderly woman who could have come straight from Central Casting. She even had her gray hair gathered behind her in a single, tight bun. She and Sam seemed to be the only people in here.

 

“Can I help you?” she asked, glancing at him over her half-spectacles.

 

“Yeah, I was wondering if you had anything on the town’s history, maybe a newspaper morgue?”

 

She put down the book she had, and got up from her chair, moving with surprising swiftness. “Follow me.”

 

He did, down a twisting series of aisles, and along the way Sam glanced around to see if this place was even in Dewey Decimal system order. He didn’t think so.

 

She led him all the way to the back, where a small table sat in front of a window, currently shrouded in rain and looking like a water feature. There were so many old tomes on the shelves he could actually smell decaying paper and mildew, and she gestured at one particularly haphazard stack of books. “All city records since the town’s founding by John-Pierre Windsor. There are some print copies of the newspaper, but you’ll mostly find them on microfiche.”

 

He figured as much. “Thank you.” She left, and he got to work, finding the oldest book – also one of the thickest – and plopping it down on the table. Sam sat, and began to skim the pages, waiting for something to jump out at him.

 

It was so quiet in the library that not only could he hear the clock ticking, but the water sluicing down the drainpipe outside sounded like a faucet turned to full blast. After a few minutes of reading, and turning the eggshell thin, sepia toned pages carefully, so they didn’t crumble in his hands, he glanced out the window to see if the rain had let up even the slightest bit.

 

And that’s when he noticed the tiny circles on the glass.

 

They were in the lower right corner, near ground level, and Sam got up for a closer look. There were maybe a little more than a half a dozen, in a vague row configuration, moving up the window. Sam touched the cool, smooth glass, but the rings were on the outside. They were exact copies of the ring he found inside Graham’s empty head, weren’t they? Except in these, he could see the tiniest of dots in the middle of each ring. Suddenly he thought of octopi, and it all fell into places. Suckers on a tentacle. But what was that tiny dot in the center? Even staring up close didn’t help.

 

Unless it was the very tip of a claw. Or a sharp tooth. What the hell ..?

 

Suddenly there was a loud slam behind him, and he just about jumped out of his skin, spinning around and tensing to fight. But it was just the librarian, who had put another thick, old book on the table. “Town birth and death records,” she said, as if she hadn’t found him crouching on the floor, tensed to murder her.

 

“Thanks.” If she was willing to ignore all the awkward weirdness, so was he. “Has there been, uh, many strange deaths around these parts?”

 

“Define strange,” she replied, and then walked away into the stacks before he had a chance to do so.

 

Okay then, yet more weirdness to add to the heap. This town was certainly not lacking it. Where did they even begin?

 

Sam returned to the books, and started perusing the death records. Most were lacking in detail, but Sam saw a pattern immediately. There were an awful lot of drowning deaths, and more than a few boats going down or getting wrecked. Were there hidden rocky reefs or sandbars in the water? A particularly bad undertow?  He and Dean were going to have to check out the harbor sooner rather than later. Even without Winnie, the waters around here were strange and deadly.

 

Sam got another jolt of fear when a hand slapped his shoulder, making him jump. “Whoa, hey,” Dean said. “If you didn’t want people sneakin’ up on you, maybe you shouldn’t have broken into a library.”

 

Sam didn’t understand that joke. But that was okay, as Dean usually thought he was funnier than he actually was. “This town is majorly screwed up.”

 

“Tell me about it. I just came from a ghost bar.”

 

Sam looked up at him. Another joke he didn’t get? “What?”

 

“The Dive, down from our motel. It’s made from the reclaimed wood of a shipwreck, and all hands are apparently still on deck.”

 

“Holy shit. How many ghosts are there?”

 

Dean shrugged. “I stopped counting around ten. Maybe a baker’s dozen? Give or take three or four. And they are not happy dead guys.”

 

“Are we actually going to have to burn down a bar?”

 

“I’m leaving it up to the bartender. He apparently has some kind of understanding with the ghosts.”

 

Well, that was … something. Yet more strangeness. “If it’s anything, I think I know what we found in Graham’s head. It was a tentacle’s sucker mark.”

 

“Say what now?”

 

Sam stood. “If you make any hentai jokes I swear I’m punching you. It’s just that I saw similar marks on the window, and –“ Sam stopped, looking down at the bottom of the window.

 

Dean joined him, and asked, “What? What am I looking for?”

 

The ring marks were gone. The window was perfectly clean, just speckled with rain. “They were right here,” he said, not understanding this. The rain hadn’t been affecting the rings when he was studying them. “Ask the librarian. She must have seen them too.”

 

Dean raised an eyebrow at him. “Librarian? Dude, the library’s closed. There’s a huge sign on the door. You broke into the place. What, did you think you were breaking into an open library?”

 

“Dean, what are you talking about? I didn’t break into the library.” He didn’t, did he? He had no memory of that. Except now he just realized his jeans were really wet where he’d been kneeling on the pavement, picking the lock.

 

Wait, what? Why was he just remembering that now? And what about the librarian?

 

Now Dean was staring at him in concern. “Sammy?”

 

“I think we need to get out of here,” he finally said, grabbing one of the books from the table. He handed it to Dean before picking up the births and death registry for himself. “I don’t think the bar is the only place that’s haunted.”

 

It was official. Point Windsor was one of the freakiest places they had ever visited.


	3. None Shall Pass

 

_**3 – None Shall Pass** _

 

 

As soon as they got back to the motel, Dean went through the equipment in the trunk until he found the iron knife and iron crowbar they kept for ghost emergencies, and gave Sam the knife. Since this place was so haunted, they might as well be ready. Dean was now wondering if anybody else in this town was alive. He had some deep suspicions about the motel clerk.

 

Sam didn’t exactly tell him what all had happened at the library, except the ghost librarian wasn’t hot (too bad). It had freaked him out, though, more than a bar full of sailor ghosts had freaked out Dean. Maybe because it was hard for ghosts to freak him out now. How many had he burned up at this point in his life? He’d been putting them down since he was twelve. Hard to be creeped out by something you took as evil wallpaper by now.

 

Or it had to do with that ghost tentacle Sam saw on the window. Now, he was dying to make several very good hentai jokes, but if something with tentacles managed to rip out all of Graham’s organs and his ribcage through his mouth or his ass – which one was grosser? – there were no jokes to make. It was fucking disgusting, and just batshit bonkers. Also, did that mean this tentacled thing was a ghost? How did that make sense?

 

Sam had figured out that too many people died in the water around here, but what it all meant was up for grabs. They’d found little officially on Winnie – not without an internet connection – but what little there was didn’t seem to correspond with the deaths. Much.

 

They were going to have to go down by the shore sooner rather than later. It would be nice to have some idea of what they were dealing with, maybe prep some weapons, but they’d never dealt with a tentacled ghost thing that slurped up internal organs like candy. And what did that have to do with a town full of ghosts, or a sea monster? Were they at all connected? How could it be a coincidence? And this didn’t even bring in the weird weather. What the fuck did this all mean?

 

It was so frustrating. And their inability to get online or call Bobby seemed like part of the problem. Sam thought he was being paranoid, but Dean could only see this as an act of deliberate sabotage. Something didn’t want them catching on too quickly, or perhaps at all. Yeah, okay, it sounded crazy, but this whole town was fucking crazy. It was just par for the course.

 

They’d tooled up as best they could, trying to prepare for just about everything. Well, Dean did. Luckily, he had along the coat he’d added a whole lot of inner pockets to, so he could store stuff. Not that he ever admitted to Sam that he’d once stayed up sewing extra pockets to the inside of his jacket, but … yeah, okay, he did. But it was good to be ready, and sewing stitches, sewing stuff in a coat, pretty much the same damn thing. It helped to be a little drunk doing both.

 

There was a little waterfront area, a pier with a few shacks and a slip for boats, although most of the boats were dinghies and rowboats that were currently sinking under the onslaught of rain. Didn’t they cover them up? Dean thought that they did usually, but his knowledge of boats could be summed up in a single sentence: They floated, except when they didn’t.

 

The water itself was flat and gray, kind of like the sky. It looked like any other piece of ocean anywhere not tropical. Not particularly inviting, not today, but it didn’t radiate menace either. It was just water.

 

Most of the shacks on the pier weren’t open – big shocker – but the bait shop and boat rental place seemed to be, so they went in to have a talk with the owner. Dean had been expecting a Simpson’s Sea Captain type, white haired and bearded, chomping on a pipe. What they got was a short, chunky guy with a huge bald spot and a wispy mustache that was about a fourth of an inch away from a genuine Hitler ‘stache. He was even wearing a cardigan. Dean hated him on general principal.

 

It also didn’t help that he started setting off all of Dean’s alarm bells right away. He was sitting behind the counter, carving a stake into a point with an almost comically large hunting knife. He and Sam exchanged a wary look before Dean asked, “Hunting vampires?”

 

“Tent peg,” the man answered robotically, never looking up. “I prefer making them myself.”

 

“Okay,” Sam said, playing along, He was much better at this than Dean. “We’re with the Fish and Wildlife Service –“ They flashed their phony IDs, but the clerk never looked up. “- and we’re looking into the death of Paul Graham. Do you know what area he generally liked to fish?”

 

The man kept peeling the stake with the blade. It was too sharp and too thin for a tent peg. Hell, it was too thin for much of a use at all. It looked to Dean like the blade was kind of dull, and he was putting an awful lot of effort into sharpening the stake. Or whatever the hell it was. It was about to be a nub within two minutes. Would he keep peeling? Maybe strip his flesh off his hand? “Fish ain’t too good around here. I wouldn’t fish around here. All the fish are dead.”

 

He and Sam exchanged another look, and Sam mouthed the word “Drugs?” to him. This guy was sleepy and robotic, and acting like they weren’t here at all. This was about seven different kinds of wrong. “What do you mean all the fish are dead?” Dean prompted.

 

The guy had whittled the stick down to nothing. He dropped it in a garbage can, picked up another stick, and started whittling again. There were maybe a dozen similar sticks beside the cash register. “This isn’t the season for fishing. Season comes around again in a year. Not now. Not during the harvest.”

 

“The harvest?” Sam repeated. “What do you mean?”

 

The clerk kept on whittling. He hadn’t looked at them once.

 

The bad feeling in Dean’s gut had turned rancid. He was itching to go for his gun, but he didn’t know what to point it at. “What’s being harvested? Who’s doing the harvesting?” Dean asked. So many alarm bells. His creep meter had already hit eleven, and was ticking over to twelve. “We can help you if you’d just talk to us.”

 

The man chuckled faintly, breathlessly, like he had no strength in him. Now he was rocking slightly on his stool. “So much talk. The talk doesn’t stop. It doesn’t do any good either. There’s no good here at all.”

 

“What do you mean?” Sam prompted. He was giving Dean a “move on three” look, and he nodded almost imperceptibly. Why wait until three? He was prepared to dive over the counter now.

 

Now the man looked up at them. His eyes had a glazed, hollow look of total madness. “The stars are screaming. Can’t you hear them?” He then stabbed the wooden stake right into his own left eye.

 

Dean was already moving as he did it, but he just cleared the counter in time to catch the man before he hit the floor. He’d jammed the stake in about three or four inches, enough that what remained of his eye was dripping down his face, along with blood. Dean didn’t check for a pulse, because he’d plunged it deep enough to hit gray matter.

 

“What the fuck was that?” Sam asked. Dean laid the man out on the floor, besides his fallen blade and trash can full of failed stakes. He’d been doing this for hours. “Is everyone in this town either dead or crazy?”

 

Dean ran a hand down his face, and shook his head. “He knew what did this, and he was so scared, he decided to kill himself rather that tell us. What does that tell you?”

 

Sam sighed, and threw his hands up in the air. “Beyond us being totally screwed? This might be too big for us, Dean.”

 

“Oh, I guarantee this is too big for us. Too big, too ugly, too weird.” Dean leaned on the counter, hoping the guy had left something behind that might point at a culprit. But all he’d left were his pile of sticks and his cash register.

 

“You’re gonna hate me for saying this, but I think we should leave. Now.”

 

Probably to the surprise of both of them, Dean nodded. “We need more info, and we can’t get it here. I’m all for a strategic retreat, just long enough to get some information and come back with an arsenal of shit to kill this fucking thing.”

 

Sam looked around for any further clues, but this was just a bait shop. He also looked a little green around the gills, but Dean got that too. It was far from the worst thing either of them had ever seen, but it was just the idea that they had seen a man have a psychotic break in front of them, and were unable to stop him from killing himself. There was nothing so bad as knowing you failed someone, total stranger or not.

 

They walked out of the little shop to find the rain had let up to a drizzle, which was something, although now a low fog was starting to roll in off the water. Not at all ominous, or weird in the middle of the afternoon. Nope. Totally normal. Dean decided to take a look at the water over the grimy pier, and it was just blue-gray water, slightly choppy from the weather. He didn’t see any dead fish, though, and those usually floated.

 

And then an eye the size of a tangerine broke the surface.

 

It was black and blue, and the diamond shaped blue pupil seemed to fix on him, finding him the same second he saw it. It glared with what could only be called genuine, palpable hate.

 

Dean jumped back and pulled his gun at the same time. “What?” Sam asked, looking around.

 

“Thing in the water.”

 

Sam glanced over the pier, and Dean reached out and grabbed his arm, ready to pull him back in case the thing made a grab for him. But after a few seconds, Sam looked back at him, confused. “There’s nothing there.”

 

Dean edged up, and glanced over the pier, gun first. Just a choppy surface. No eye, no creature. Nothing but a light skim of froth. “I saw something,” he insisted. “It saw me.”

 

Sam sighed. “Oh please don’t tell me that guy’s madness was contagious.”

 

“I am not –“ Dean felt himself getting angry, and made himself calm down. His nerves were just frayed, and he really wanted something to punch. “Look, let’s just leave, okay? We can argue on the road.”

 

Sam shrugged, and led the way off the pier. Dean did not holster his gun until they returned to the car.

 

They made a personal best time of loading their stuff from the motel back in the car and taking off, not even hitting the five minute mark. Staying another minute in Port Windsor felt like a threat to sanity.

 

There was one road into town, the same road out. And they were about five hundred feet from the Welcome to Point Windsor sign when the car just stopped. It died completely, with no warning. “Don’t do this to me, baby,” he said, trying to turn the engine over. But it was like all the electricity had been sucked out of the car. It had nothing left to give.

 

“Dean,” Sam said, his tone alarmed.

 

Dean looked up, reaching for his gun, when he saw that was pretty pointless. The road ahead of them was chock full of ghosts. Dozens upon dozens, making a spectral fence from the front of the Impala to just beyond the sign. Ice crackled across the windshield, a growing frosty film like glaucoma, and the temperature dropped so violently within the car, before they knew what was happening, their breath was exploding outwards in clouds of vapor, and their fingers were stinging from the numbing chill. Dean had to throw his shoulder into the door to open it, and he heard the crack of ice shifting off the car as he did so.

 

It seemed warm out now that they were out of the car, and a quick glance inside showed a rime of ice growing over the seats. All the windows were buried under ice, and the car now had a glossy sheen. “We can fight our way out,” Dean said, moving to the trunk. He had to pull out his crowbar and crack the ice shell before he could access the lock.

 

“Are you crazy? There’s too many of them.”

 

“If we go back to back we can punch a way through.” He pulled out a sawed off shotgun, already loaded with rock salt, and held it out to Sam, who didn’t take it. He shook his head at him.

 

“Do you think they’re letting us go that easy?”

 

Dean looked at the spectral army ahead of them, which had grown larger. He could see old timey sailors and modern day people, young and old, clearly angry spirits and ones that just looked confused. They were not here by choice. Something had moved them here; something was using them as much as  the living. “What’s doing this?” Dean asked. “What’s taken over your town?”

 

To call it a long shot would have been an insult to long shots everywhere. As it was, there was no answer at all, just a further increase in ghosts. Dean tucked one of the sawed offs into his jacket, and slammed the trunk, which iced over immediately.

 

“Okay, so strategic retreat is a bust. We have to find this thing and kill it,” Dean said. It almost sounded like a plan, as long as you didn’t think about it too hard.

 

They started walking back into town. The Impala was now the world’s largest ice cube in the middle of the only road out. At least that meant other people probably weren’t coming to the party. The ghosts didn’t follow them; they remained on sentry duty.

 

“We have one other way to call for help,” Sam said.

 

Yeah, Dean had been wondering about that too. Was it time to pull the trigger? They were out of options, weren’t they? Dean stopped, sighed, and said, “Cass, can you hear me? It’s Dean, and we’re in a world of shit. We need your help now.” He and Sam glanced around, and saw only the lonely stretch of road. “Cass? Got your ears on?”

 

There was a slight noise, like the ruffle of feathers, and Castiel was suddenly standing in the road. And just as suddenly, he collapsed to his knees, grabbing his head. “Cass!”

 

Dean reached him first, crouching down beside him. The angel’s face was contorted in pain, eyes shut, mouth a grim grimace. Dean said his name, but he gave no sign of having heard him, so he grabbed his arm, and said it again. “Cass, what’s wrong?”

 

“So much pain,” he gasped, scowling deeply, jaw muscles clenching. It looked to Dean like he was trying not to scream. “Oh God, what is that noise?”

 

Dean looked up at Sam, who shook his head. He didn’t hear anything either. “What noise?”

 

Cass’s head dropped to his chest, and for a second it looked like he might have lost consciousness, but then he straightened up and opened his eyes almost instantly. He looked at Dean with dawning alarm. “You shouldn’t be here. None of us should be here.” Cass grabbed Dean’s arm, like he was going to zap him out of there, but nothing happened.

 

“What did you hear?” Sam asked.

 

Castiel looked between them with confusion and growing horror. “Oh no.”

 

“What?” Dean wondered, glancing up the road. Nope, the ghosts still hadn’t come down their way.

 

“My powers,” he said, blue eyes wide with fear. “They’re gone.”

 

Now Dean felt an adrenaline stab of alarm. “What do you mean they’re gone?”

 

“Something’s blocking them. I can’t hear other angels, I can’t get us out of this place.” He rubbed the side of his head, and Dean saw a smidgen of blood in his ear. “At least I can’t hear that horrible noise anymore.”

 

“What was it?” Sam asked again.

 

Castiel shook his head, clearly scrambling for the words. “It was … screaming. Inhuman screaming, across all angel frequencies. And so … angry.”

 

That surprised Dean. When he said screaming, he thought it was just a reiteration of the pain comment. And then what the crazy guy in the shop said came back to him. “The stars are screaming.”

 

Cass’s brow furrowed. “Stars can’t scream. They’re balls of hot gas.”

 

Dean frowned at him, but before he could explain, Sam jumped in. “Do you have any idea what we’re dealing with?”

 

Cass tilted his head in a way that meant he was pondering whether to tell them the whole truth or not. Dean wasn’t sure what side of the fence he landed on. “I think it’s an Old One.”

 

“An old one what?” Dean asked.

 

Cass flashed him a mildly irritated look. “An Old One, the gods before the gods.”

 

Dean tried to puzzle that out, and gave up. “Huh?”

 

“Call them proto-gods, gods before the universe was formed. Ancient, extremely powerful, and resentful of all lower life forms, which is everything that isn’t them. But I don’t understand … they fled. They went away to their own dimension. They decided our universe was too polluted with lesser creatures and wanted nothing to do with it.”

 

“Someone changed his mind,” Sam noted.

 

“How do we fight it?” Dean asked.

 

The look Castiel gave him was a mix of horror and genuine curiosity. Dean had seen this from him a few times now, and was starting to take it personally. “You don’t. You run, and hope they never find you.”

 

Dean threw up his hands in disgust. “Well, too late. What’s plan B?”

 

Cass opened his mouth to reply, but then his eyes glanced over Dean’s shoulder, and Dean turned to look for himself. That fog coming in off the water had seemingly swallowed up the entire waterfront; the harbor itself was no longer visible. There was just a sea of cloudy white, rolling low over the ground, seemingly swallowing it whole. It was almost as if this entire town was being erased from existence.

 

Cass jumped to his feet, and pulled Dean up with him. “We need to get out of here, get inside.”

 

“Why?” Sam asked. “What does this mean?”

 

“It’s coming.”

 

Fantastic. Who knew this day could’ve gotten even worse?


	4. At The Mountains of Madness

 

**_4 – At The Mountains of Madness_ **

 

 

The fog was moving in too fast for them to make it back to the motel. At least on foot.

 

Cass knew what it meant, and it was all bad. So they had no choice but to barricade themselves in the haunted library, and hopefully ride out the fog. If the Old One was crushing the town, they were fucked. Pure and simple. Dean wondered what it would be like to be crushed to death by an ancient proto-god. A really disappointing end for a hunter.

 

They just locked the doors and shoved a lone bookcase in front of the door, because ultimately it didn’t matter. If it wanted in, it was coming in, and there wasn’t anything they could do to stop it.

 

Cass did have one idea, though. He cut his hand and started writing Enochian symbols on the windows with his own blood. They weren’t wards exactly, but could create a type of “blind spot” amongst certain gods. Cass told them the angels worked it out for the few times they wanted privacy from gods, although it was rarely used and considered a form of blasphemy amongst many angels. Dean asked Cass if he’d ever used it before, and he said nothing. But he knew the symbols, right? Dean felt that kind of answered the question. Still, he didn’t know if it would work on an Old One. It was just a chance they had to take.

 

Since they were in the library, waiting to die, Dean took inventory of his (useless) weapons, and Sam tried to get the ghost librarian, who was not part of the spirit blockade at the border, to talk. Eventually she showed, a sort of grim old woman with a bun and a severe navy blue dress. The old biddies usually went for Sam.

 

While he was trying to see if she knew something about Old Ones, Dean sat at a table and assessed his weaponry. Cass sat across from him, surveying the table. “You fit all of these in your coat?”

 

“I’ve gotten very efficient at packing over the years.”

 

“Apparently.”

 

“And none of these could even make a dent in an Old One?”

 

Cass shook his head without hesitation. “They wouldn’t even notice you were there.”

 

Fantastic. He put Ruby’s knife away first, and then started loading up the holy water and salt. The guns usually went last, because he needed to be able to draw them right away. Although it was shockingly pointless now. “What about your angel blade? Would they notice that?”

 

“No. If it was an Archangel’s blade, it might tickle.”

 

Dean snickered at that, and Cass gave him a curious look. Okay, he wasn’t making a joke. “Is that good or bad?”

 

“I suppose that would depend on whether he was ticklish or not.”

 

Castiel was one hundred percent serious, and despite this total doomed mess, Dean was finding it hard not to laugh. He’d be an excellent deadpan comedian if he ever developed a sense of humor. “How many Old Ones are there? Does it make a difference which one we’re dealing with?”

 

“It makes a huge difference, and there’s a dozen or so of them. They have some things in common.”

 

“Such as?”

 

“Causing madness in humans. Feeding off chaos and destruction.”

 

“Sounds like they’re fun at parties.” Before Cass could seriously contradict him, he pressed on. “Any of them dwell in water, or have an affinity for it?”

 

He canted his head to the side as he thought, clearly considering possibilities. Yeah, his overly serious manner was often unintentionally hilarious, but he gave one hundred percent in all his answers, whether you wanted it or not. “A couple. Most prefer vacuum. A few find water an adequate substitute.”

 

“Who’s the worst case scenario among them?” Dean figured, with the legendary Winchester luck, they’d be dealing with the heaviest hitter.

 

Cass thought about it for almost a full minute. “Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos.”

“Fantastic. He has a title.”

“Most of them have titles.”

Dean almost asked, but ultimately decided not to. As it was, Sam finally joined them. “Okay. So Peggy, the librarian, can’t tell me anything about Old Ones, as she thought I meant senior citizens.”

 

Dean smirked. “Of course her name is Peggy.”

 

“She can tell me that things in town started really getting weird around 1972.”

 

“The year Jacobs took a swan dive off the lighthouse?”

 

Sam nodded, taking a seat. “Exactly. Hard to think of it as coincidence.”

 

Cass, who had been looking between them the whole time, said, “He could have been a sacrifice.”

 

They both stared at him. Sam spoke up first. “What?”

 

“The Old Ones require sacrifice to open a portal from one dimension to another.”

 

“Wait,” Dean said. “Are you suggesting that bastard went off the lighthouse to open a door for Nylabone?”

 

“Nyarlathotep,” Cass corrected.

“I really don’t care.”

“Nyarlathotep?” Sam repeated, sitting forward. “Wait, Cthulhu mythos Nyarlathotep?”

Dean glared at him. “What?”

“He’s a god in the Cthulhu mythos. I can’t remember which one right now, but one of them. Those are real?”

“Some,” Cass replied. “Cthulhu is more of an amalgam of other Old Ones.”

“So … what? Was Lovecraft a prophet?”

Cass shook his head. “No, I believe he was a semi-delusional racist. But he did get enough of it right that there was some suspicion one of the Old Ones was feeding him information.” 

 

Dean was vaguely aware of Cthulhu, but only in a extremely nebulous sense. Tentacle monster. “So Nylon Time is a tentacle monster?”

 

Sam sighed. “Nyarlathotep.”

“He’s an asshole, and I’m not saying his name correctly.” It was a childish stand, but it was pretty much the only one he could make at this moment. 

Sam rolled his eyes at his churlishness, but Cass just accepted it, as Cass generally did. Except when he didn’t. “He can be many things. Nyarlathotep takes many forms. That’s one of the reasons he’s called The Crawling Chaos.”

“What does he feed on?” Sam asked. “Souls, life force, organs, what?”

 

Cass looked briefly bereft. “Nothing like that, unless he’s developed a taste for them here. Nyarlathotep is known for his cruelty. He genuinely enjoys fostering madness. He doesn’t need to feed on anything recognizable to this dimension.”

“The guy who ganked himself talked about a harvest,” Dean said, finally pocketing his last gun. “What could what’s his face be harvesting?”

Cass held his hands up in a sort of a shrug. “Madness?”

Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It was now more like drowned dog than drowned gerbil. “How do you harvest madness?”

 

Before Cass could answer – if he even had one - they heard a thud on the roof. Dean and Sam both looked up, as if they could see through the ceiling, but Cass looked out the window, and soon they did too.

 

The fog was so thick it was like trying to see through milk. But suddenly a blue-gray tentacle the size of a fire hose slapped up against the window, suckers sliding along the glass, and Dean tried to estimate the size of it. Longer than the Impala by far. And way too fucking big to have left such a dainty mark inside Graham’s skull. The Enochian symbols trembled with the glass, but since the tentacles didn’t bust through, Dean had to assume Cass’s angel code was working.

 

“Holy fuck,” Sam breathed, pitching his voice at a whisper. “How big is this thing?”

 

“He could be as small as a bat, or as large as space,” Cass answered, with his usual empathy free honesty. “He is not limited by the physical laws of this universe.”

 

Dean pulled out his flask with the alcohol in it. “So let me get this straight. It can be any thing, or any size, at any time. It’s cruel, and it loves making people insane for the pure shits and giggles of it? Is that about right?”

 

Cass seemed puzzled. “I’m not sure excrement is involved, but that is generally correct.”

 

Dean drained his flask, because fuck it. If he was going to die, he wasn’t doing it totally sober. He’d done that before, and didn’t enjoy it.

 

The ground was trembling faintly as the endless, insanely long tentacles ambled in and out of the choking fog, and Dean guessed that, in his current form, Narly-face was five times the size of the lighthouse. Even if he had something to kill it with, he had no idea where you’d start with something that big. (No, that was a lie. He’d go for the head. That was usually a safe bet for incapacitation if nothing else.)

 

Sam chuckled faintly, holding his head in hands. “We’re totally fucked, aren’t we?”

 

Dean wanted to agree, but didn’t. Again, he had this weird impulse to not let Sammy see his hopelessness. Had it ever once worked? Had he ever not seen through it? “How long do we have to be off the grid before Zachariah or Lucifer notice we’re missing?”

 

Sam looked up, surprised, but Cass didn’t seem to find the question that odd. “I would think a couple of days at least.”

 

“Could they take on Naomi Watts here?”

 

Cass opened his mouth to correct him, but paused, and actually let him have this one. This felt like a minor triumph. “No. He’s too much for both of them put together. I am not certain he can die.”

 

“And with strange aeons even death may die,” Sam said. At Dean’s look, he told him, “That’s from the Cthulhu mythos.”

 

“Nerd,” Dean teased. He pondered this, wishing for more booze. “So if we can’t kill it, what can we do with it?”

 

“Trap it?” Sam suggested.

 

Cass grimaced, watching the retreat of Narly-face out of the corner of his eye. Apparently he was concerned about it now that he was basically mortal, if not exactly human. “I can’t think of what would trap an Old One.”

 

“Send him back,” Dean said. “We open a portal and chuck his ass back to the Phantom Zone.”

 

Dean was slightly offended by the surprised expression on Sammy’s face. “Hey, that’s a good idea.”

 

“What, like I never have them?”

 

“No. It’s just your good ideas generally involve stabbing or shooting.”

 

“Gotta play to your strengths.” He looked across the table at Cass, who was still considering it. “Doable?”

 

“Possibly. It will require human blood. And if Nyarlathotep figures out what we’re doing, we will pay for it instantly.”

“You mean he’ll kill us,” Sam said.

 

The look Cass gave him was so cold even Dean felt the chill of it. “If we’re lucky.”

 

Wonderful. Death wasn’t even the worst case scenario here. Dean almost asked, but again, he abandoned it almost instantly. He didn’t want to know. They’d end up an Old One’s chew toy, like that guy at the bait shop, or all those poor bastard ghosts who littered this town. Dead but not dead; never resting, always subject to the whims of a bastard god who had nothing better to do than play with them. Dean looked out the window, at the retreating tentacles and fog, and saw Cass’s sigils still there, weird little angular marks with some squiggles and what could very well have been a wine bottle. “Would those work on people?”

 

Cass looked at them, as if weighing the odds. “Possibly. But it won’t render us physically invisible.”

 

“But beneath his notice under every other circumstance, right?” Sam asked.

 

Cass dipped his head. “Ideally.”

 

“Fantastic. You were the right guy to call, Cass,” Dean said.

 

He gave him that curious look again. “I was the only one you could call.”

 

“Details.”

 

“We still have one huge problem,” Sam said, being a buzzkill. “What ritual do we use to open a portal? Would a portal to Hell do, or does it have to be specifically targeted to the Old One’s dimension?”

 

“If an Old One went to Hell he’d take it over,” Cass said. “And then open it up here, just for the, as you say, shits and giggles.”

 

“Okay, let’s not do that,” Dean said.

 

“I’m not sure if I know of a ritual to open up a door to the Old Ones’ dimension,” Cass stared down at the table, lost in thought. “I’ll have to meditate on it.”

 

Dean sat forward. “Pardon?”

 

Oh good, he got Cass’s irritated look again. He would swear he saved it only for him. “If I was still tuned into angel radio, it would be faster for me to find. But I’m cut off, and I’m going to have to do the search by myself. Do you know how old I am, how many memories I have? I remember Cro-Magnons. Your life span is barely a nanosecond of my time. I’ve forgotten more than the entirety of Earth’s population has ever remembered. I will have to dig through until I find some relevant. It may take a while.”

 

“Define a while,” Dean asked.

 

Cass sighed. “I’ll try and make sure it won’t last longer than tomorrow.”

 

“You remember Cro-Magnons?” Sam asked.

 

Cass nodded. “The Earth was really beautiful then.”

 

“You guys are crazy,” Peggy, the ghost librarian said, startling all of them. She was now standing a couple feet away from the table. “Do you think you’re the first to try and fight this whatever the hell that’s taken over the town? A lot of people have tried, and they’re lucky if they end up like me.”

 

Dean tried to visually size her up, but being a ghost made it difficult. “Did you try and fight it?”

 

She gave him a stern look that would have looked really sexy on a hot librarian. On her, it was simply terrifying. “Of course I did, you putz. You think I’m hangin’ around here for my health?”

 

“What did you do?” Sam asked.

 

“Banishment ritual, face shots, the whole nine yards. Nada. Might as well have insulted its mother and prank called it for all the good it did.”

 

“They don’t have mothers,” Cass said.

 

“Good to know,” Dean replied. But what did they have then? Oh shit, there was a whole endless wormhole of useless stuff he could talk about here, but it wasn’t important right now. He had to focus. “Were you a hunter?”

 

“Hunter adjacent. I helped them out occasionally, when the big words were too much for them. And it got me a nice place in the undead zone, where I can watch things go to hell and do shit about it. It’s real fun.”

 

“How long have you been a ghost?” Sam wondered.

 

“Your time? Twenty two years. My time? Feels like an eternity plus one.”

 

“You can’t have eternity plus one,” Cass said. “Eternity is eternity.”

 

She gestured to Castiel with her thumb. “What’s with Rain Man here?”

 

Dean found it very difficult not to smile. He changed his mind; he liked her. “He’s an angel. They’re very literal.”

 

Peggy shifted her half glasses down her nose, and visually scrutinized Cass. Being a ghost, she didn’t need those glasses, but she probably liked having these old touchstones of her former humanity. “Angel, huh? Okay, you’re cute, but where’s the wings, the halos, the flowy hippie robes?”

 

“I don’t have my powers right now,” Cass said. “And we never wore robes. Why does everyone think that?”

 

“Lotsa bad art,” Peggy told him honestly. “Oh, and Jesus wasn’t a white guy, was he?”

 

“No. Do people think that too?”

 

“You have a lot of catching up to do. I got some shitty art history books in the back if you’d like to go through them.”

 

“How are you sane?” Sam asked. “Usually after a couple decades, ghosts can get pretty …”

 

“Cuckoo nutballs? And in this town especially.” Peggy made a room encompassing gesture with her hands. “But I got it all over those other loser Caspers. I got my books to keep me sane. Works too, although I’d be damned if I know how. Well, I mean damned twice. Kinda already damned over here.”

 

“Can you leave here?” Sam asked. “Would Nyarlathotep recognize you?”

“That’s the guy?” At Sam’s nod, she rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Lovecraft. If I never have to read his purple prose again, it’ll be too soon. So it’s a madness inducing tentacle god from space?”

Sam shrugged. “I’ve read worse.”

Wow, she got this quick. Dean made a mental note to do a little more reading when he had the chance. “What did you think it was?”

She shrugged her bony shoulders. “No fucking clue. Some god with a bug wedged so deep up his ass that he had to take it out on everyone within reach.”

“Why would a bug –“Cass began, but Dean cut him off with a wave of his hand. 

“Expression. I must have used it around you by now.” He left Cass pondering that as he turned to Peggy. “Got any hunter journals? Any books that might help us come up with a dimensional portal spell to dump this dickhole?”

“I don’t know. That sounds pretty heavy duty. Still, c’mon pretty boy, you can help me look through the stacks, see if I’ve got something about old gods.”

Dean looked at Sam, assuming Peggy was asking for his help. But Sam grinned at him in a way that made his stomach drop. Dean pointed at himself. “You mean me?”

Peggy rolled her eyes again. “Why are the pretty ones always so dumb? Move your ass, boy toy, we’ve got work to do.” She turned and disappeared through the stacks.

Sam was trying very hard not to laugh, and he was totally failing. “You’re so in there, dude.”

“Shut up.” He stood, and noticed the opaque fog was almost gone. Narly-Face must have finally moved on completely. So, he was what, currently the size of two or three Chrysler buildings? Fantastic. How did you make a dimensional portal that large?

As he was wondering about that, Dean saw movement on the library window. He thought it was just more rain, until he saw it was just a millipede crawling on the outside glass. Then another. And another. 

Slowly but surely, millipedes and centipedes began to cover the window, a living curtain of twitching legs and sinuous bodies, and it was unclear if they were just raining down for the sky, or this was simply a random occurrence. Maybe he had insect groupies that followed him everywhere. 

Both Sam and Cass stood up from the table, watching as the heaving, skittering mound blocked out what little outside light there was. “Oh man, that’s so disgusting,” Sam said.He had a thing about millipedes. Clown millipedes would totally break his brain. 

“Is he attacking us with bugs now?” Dean asked, looking at Cass.

Cass shrugged. “He can attack us with anything he likes, at any time. I probably should warn you, the closer we get to Nyarlathotep, the more likely we are to have violent hallucinations. Touching him will destroy your sanity.”

“So we can’t let him touch us. Awesome.” Yeah, this was sounding better and better all the time. 

But they were the Winchesters, right? Hopeless causes was there terrible middle name. And surely with a ghosted hunter and a powerless angel helping them out, they could come up with something.

Dean suddenly wondered if he ever made out a will. He would hate for the Impala to spend its final days in an impound lot. 


	5. Bloodbath

 

**_5 – Bloodbath_ **

 

 

It took hours, but they had a plan. A very loose plan, but it was just going to have to do. They had no other choice.

 

Dean and Peggy hadn’t found much in the books, but they found something about a spell opening a portal to another dimension. Not Heaven or Hell, just a dimension with no name. According to Cass, that didn’t narrow it down at all; there were as many dimensions as grains of sand on a beach. But it was a place to start.

 

Cass also eventually remembered something that would help tweak the spell, enough that it might help send Nyarlathotep to the correct dimension. The problem – because there was always at least one, and usually several, some last minute – was they were going to need supplies, lots of supplies, and none of them were in the library. They were going to have to venture into town to find them. The scary, ghost haunted, madness possessed, Nyarlathotep stalked town.

 

At least they solved one problem. Dean wondered where they were going to hold a ritual that could open a portal big enough to take a god that huge, and Sam had the answer: the harbor. Hold it in the water. Nyarlathotep liked it there, right? He’d most likely be there anyway. Of course, that was also another problem, as that was where he liked to kill, but they’d burn that bridge when they came to it.

 

They broke the item gathering into stages, as they had a lot to get, and not a lot of time to get it. Peggy couldn’t leave the library, at least not yet, but she knew the town, and using a map, told them where they’d most likely get the items they needed. Using her directions, they broke the item lists into neighborhoods. Each one of them would take a separate neighborhood and get the items on that particular list.

 

Dean, as Sam expected, instantly volunteered to take the most dangerous one, the farthest away from the library. Sam objected, but it was a token objection, as Dean had that look in his eye, the one that said he was going to start climbing the walls if he didn’t get to punch something soon. When he was in that kind of mood, it was best just to face him towards the enemy and let him go, and hope he didn’t get his fool ass killed. When he got into Demolition Man mode, it was terrifying and awe inspiring in equal measure. It also made Sam despair just a little at what Dad had done to him. But there was no help for it now, and if they could use it in their favor, all the better.

 

They had a small argument over whether Cass should take one alone or not, as Dean was concerned about him, and didn’t want to say he was. (But he totally was.) Sam kind of got it, because he didn’t have his angel power set at the moment, but as Cass pointed out himself, he was a soldier. He wasn’t completely defenseless. Still, Sam gave him the neighborhood closest to the library, and took the middle one for himself.

 

Other problems: they had to try and avoid Nyarlathotep if he was out there, because it was game over if they caught his attention. And not only were their ghosts under his sway out there, but people who were probably mad as Hatters. They would probably try to kill them, and never know why. They had to defend themselves, but they also had to do their best not to kill them if they could at all avoid it. That brought to mind one of the first lessons Dad had ever taut him (and presumably Dean) about fighting: the first rule, always enter a fight prepared to kill your opponent. Try your damnedest not to (if it was a human), but the fighter who hesitated and held back was the fighter who lost. It sounded psychotic the first time Sam heard it, and it still felt that way … but he was one hundred percent right. You either approached a fight like it was life or death, or you didn’t fight at all. And these poor crazed people weren’t going to hesitate one iota.

 

Cass drew the angel cloaking symbols on all of them, on their backs, because he needed a bigger canvas than simply their arms. Dean complained about how “weird” it was, but Sam expected that, and Cass didn’t seem to care. For an angel, drawing stuff on people in your own blood apparently didn’t even move the weird meter. He had to draw them on himself too, but used his stomach, as it was easier for him to reach.

 

They each had something iron, some salt, and a conventional weapon or two (Cass turned down a gun, deciding his angel blade was enough). Cass also thought his angel blade should work against ghosts, which was an intriguing thought. Did angel blades work against all creatures? They were going to have to test that sometime. Dean was loaded for war, because of course he was, but Sam just went with a gun. He had the iron knife too, although that was for ghosts. Hopefully. He’d use it on others only if he absolutely had to.

 

Dean headed out first, with an empty backpack, and a promise to bring back beer and food as well. It was three in the morning, so you’d think the town would be dead – no pun intended – but they could take nothing for granted.

 

Peggy said the same thing to all of them as they headed out: “You’re all fucking nuts. Try not to get killed, you pretty idiots.” It reminded him of Bobby, in a way. At least the idiots part.

 

The rain had tapered off to a constant light mist that drenched you as well as a downpour. It was nighttime quiet and dark, eerie and cold, and even though Sam was walking down quaint sidewalks, he got a spooky graveyard kind of vibe. It didn’t help that only a few of the streetlights worked. No houses had any lights on, not even porch lights. That was very strange.

 

Sam was a block away from his first destination, cutting through a quiet, overgrown backyard, when he saw some real horror Nyarlathotep left in his wake. There were over a dozen dead people on the street. But they had all died horribly.

 

The victims had their eyes clawed out, either by themselves or by others; people had been eviscerated, guts spread out like fallen streamers across the asphalt. Sam found two men still locked together in the act of killing each other, one with his hands around the other’s throat, while the strangled man had buried a kitchen knife and his own arm deep in the second man’s stomach. Amongst the corpses was a little boy, probably no more than ten, with his head hanging on only by a scrap of muscle. There was an arm just laying there, ragged shoulder suggesting it had been torn out of the socket, but there was no sign of the person it must have belonged to. The rain hadn’t diluted the blood, only made it deeper, as the sewer drain was clogged. The street looked red slicked, a bloody river cutting through a swath of suburban houses. Decay had yet to start; it all smelled like fresh death, metallic and fetid.

 

Sam covered his mouth and nose with his hand, and told himself he was only trying to block the smell, and not at all because he was feeling faintly nauseous. Death, even this horrible and pointless, wasn’t new to him. But it never got any easier to take.

 

**

 

Dean was so happy to see a store, he didn’t care he had to break into it. He was starving.

 

He couldn’t remember the last time he ate. Before coming to Point Windsor, right? Since then he’d only had booze, which was fine, but his stomach was just about eating itself right now.

 

It wasn’t a huge supermarket, just a mom and pop kind of place, so Dean threw a handful of cash on the counter as he chowed down on a candy bar, and started wandering the aisles, looking for what they needed.

 

Part of the ritual required a special oil that they were never going to find here in a million years, but both Peggy and Cass thought they could mock up some vegetable oil to adequately do the job, so in his backpack it went. By the time he hit the beer cooler, he was working on some beef jerky, because protein was always good, right? He grabbed some salt and threw it in, because you could never have enough salt. He couldn’t take any beer with him, not now, because the bottles and cans were heavy, took up a lot of room, and made noise, but he resolved to stop on his way back and load up as much as he could take. He did take two cans, though, opening one now and shoving the other in his coat pocket, as he felt he’d need it on the way. This was not a night for sobriety.

 

From the store it was a long hike to the next stop, the town’s church, but he cut across backyards and jumped fences, cutting down the time. Despite the two beers, which left him feeling warmer and a bit more centered, his paranoia hadn’t died down a single iota. It seemed to be getting worse. He could almost feel eyes upon him; his skin itched with the presence of it. Of course he saw no one. Also, where were all the pets? Dogs, cats? He hadn’t seen a single one this whole time. He saw no lights on in any houses either, which was setting off all kinds of alarm bells. What wasn’t, though? This entire town had pretty much broken his creep meter.

 

Of course, part of the itching might be the drying angel blood on his back. Goddamn, that was weird. You’d think it would be blood like any other blood, especially since Cass was currently depowered, but Dean would swear it not only had a vague sort of tingle, but it never got cold. Still drying, and yet still warm. Angels just had to be different, didn’t they?

 

Finally he spied the town’s only church, an old Catholic one that had converted to Protestant as Catholicism fell away. According to Peggy, it didn’t make a shitload of difference, because even before Narly-whatever came here, the church was a dying entity anyway. Not that it would have helped keep Narly away, because it wouldn’t have. It was just one of those bits of trivia that Peggy treated them to despite its lack of helpfulness.

 

Dean could only see it in silhouette, but it was a church just like any other church, a steepled building with what looked to be an inset stained glass window on the side, although Dean couldn’t tell what it was. Should he just walk in the front? Churches even locked their doors now, but you never knew. He decided to give it a shot.

 

To his surprise, this was one of the unlocked ones. He walked right in, to find a darkened church with empty pews, yet the still prevalent odor of incense in the air. It was possible that the church was doing good business nowadays, what with all the crazy and the evil. Again, it couldn’t help, but there were probably people who felt like it should.

 

He had two things to get in here. First, there was a reliquary in the old bishop’s office, according to Peggy, that supposedly had a bone belonging to a French priest named Abel Dieudonne. (Also according to Peggy, the old Bishop was a “real freak”.) Dean still had a good chuckle over the fact that the ritual required a “holy bone” (that’s what she said). Also, the church had brass candlesticks, and they needed brass for the ritual.

 

He walked up the empty aisle, eyes adjusted enough to the dark that he didn’t need to turn on a flashlight, and dropped the first brass candlestick he encountered in his backpack. Dean had to explore a bit before finding the old Bishop’s office – it looked like it was being as a storage room now – but no one had moved the reliquary, which was a metal and wood box that hadn’t aged particularly well. No wonder no one had ever stolen it. Besides, what was inside just looked like an old, gross finger bone, and you probably couldn’t even shift it on ebay for very much.

 

Dean was wondering if they had any old communion wine leftover he could steal – he’d finished his beers about a half mile ago – when he came out into the church proper, and found it filled. He almost said something, but when his breath exploded into white clouds, he knew what was going on.

 

The pews were filled with ghosts.

 

He honestly couldn’t tell if these were the same ones from the road or not, but it didn’t really matter. There were about twenty two in all, some flickering like candle flames, all standing and waiting for … something. No, strike that. They’d been waiting for him. The waves of malevolence washed over him like the sudden chill.

 

“I don’t suppose you guys’d like to talk it out, huh?” Dean asked, slipping his hand into his pocket, and grabbing the stock of the sawed off filled with rock salt ammo.

 

A old timey sailor ghost disappeared from the nearest pew and reappeared in front of him in a blink, and Dean didn’t bother pulling the gun out, he simply shot it through the pocket. It disappeared in a scatter of smoke.

 

Invisible hands grabbed Dean and flung him across the altar, and he collided painfully with a table of some sort, shattering it as he hit it. Still, he had his gun out and fired blindly, sure he hit something, as he quickly ejected the spent shells and reloaded. More invisible hands grabbed him by the ankle and flung him into the pews, where he hit one and went falling over with it, tasting blood. “Motherfucker,” he snarled, shooting at a looming shadow that dissolved like a mirage. “It’s not me you should be mad at.”

 

Suddenly the ghost of a girl was over him, and she drove her hand into his chest. He felt her icy hand close around his heart, sending massive shockwaves of pain coursing through his body, as another sailor ghost loomed over him, reaching down for his face.

 

He shot Casper the sailor man right in the head, and even though he could barely move, he managed to grab the crowbar in his other pocket and slash it through ghost girl’s arm, making her disappear. Dean took in a huge, convulsive gasp of air as his heart started pumping again, but his muscles were all trembling and not willing to work with him just yet. “Get up, you stupid fucker,” he growled to himself, as he blindly shot another shadow moving towards him.

 

He found himself being pulled along the ground, towards a huge clot of ghosts, and he was forced to hastily reload before he could shoot into them. The problem was he only had two shots before he had to reload, and with this amount of ghosts, they were going to make mincemeat out of him. As if to prove that point, he found himself flung across the church again, and he collided painfully with the far wall. The only reason he hadn’t lost the gun was because he had his fingers locked around the trigger guard. He was pretty sure he felt his left shoulder pop out of its socket; the pain was radiant. He had to move his left hand, he had no choice, but it was difficult, and it hurt enough that he wanted to scream.

 

Five ghosts surrounded him, moving in slowly, letting him savor the fact that he couldn’t get them all before they got him. Or so they thought. He dropped his gun in his lap, and with his right hand, reached into his pack, and grabbed a handful of salt. They lurched forward, certain he was doing something bad, and he blew all the salt into the faces and bodies of the surrounding ghosts, who dissolved away in irritation. It wasn’t as effective as rock salt shot, but it worked in a pinch.

 

Dean had just picked up his gun again when it felt like he was dropkicked across the apse once more, this time hitting the stained glass window and falling outside in a minor hurricane of broken glass.

 

He hit the ground hard, and his consciousness wavered, but the pain of broken glass slicing into his skin and the frigid chill of the air brought him back. He groaned and rolled over onto his arms and legs, the glass continuing to crunch and slice like it held a grudge against him too. His blood was now pattering down onto the grass, a little stronger than the rain, but he was actually glad they kicked him outside. This gave him a chance to escape.

 

He was on his knees, working to get up to his feet, when he noticed rime starting to spread across the lawn like a wave. “Oh, fuck me.” His ghost friends weren’t done with him yet. And they weren’t tied to the church. Thanks to Narly, they were only tied to him.

 

Dean grabbed his sawed off, which had also been booted outside, and struggled to reload before the first of the angry ghosts reached him. “I don’t suppose being a friend of Peggy’s will sway you at all?”

 

There was no answer, but he didn’t expect one. He turned and fired into the oncoming cluster of ghosts, wondering, if he died here, if he’d end up tied to Narly too.


	6. Destruction Makes the World Burn Brighter

 

_**6 – Destruction Makes the World Burn Brighter** _

 

 

Castiel felt kind of bad for ghosts.

 

Well, feeling “bad” was probably an overstatement, but it still encapsulated his general feelings on the matter quite well. They were stuck in a weird half-life, not technically alive, very technically dead, with one foot in this dimension and another out of it. It still seemed like a loophole the reapers should have closed. He supposed it came down to free will again, but it seemed like no good ever came of it. So why did it exist?

 

He could almost hear Zachariah telling him it was “above his pay grade”, a Human expression he seemed to like, even though it made no sense at all among angels. And Zachariah accused him of being “too Human”. Hypocrite.

 

With his angel powers working it was easy to sense those in the veil, but now that they were cut off, he felt like he was missing most of his senses. It was disorienting and debilitating, but he was managing. If the Winchesters had taught him nothing, besides random curse words, insults, and colorful euphemisms, they’d taught him that you just put your head down and kept going for as long as you could. The state you were in didn’t matter. You just went on until it was simply impossible to do so anymore. It was self-defeating and stupid and all kinds of wonderful. Made him really feel like part of the team.

 

He was conflicted over what he would do if he ran into a Human. He’d have to hurt them. No one in this town could be taken to be sane, through no fault of their own. It was almost impossible to believe an Old One as powerful as Nyarlathotep could be on Earth for any length of time without taking it over – as he could do, with great ease – but that wasn’t Nyarlathotep’s source of pleasure. He didn’t want power; power was an easy thing for Old Ones. He reveled in pain, suffering, and a million little cruelties. He could make the world his toy box, but he wouldn’t be able to truly enjoy the microscopic torment he so loved to inflict if it was diffused. It was quantity over quality. Of course, he might eventually change his mind and become a glutton.

 

These poor people. They had been subject to torment that would probably make Hell look quaint by contrast. Even if they could save the town, there was a chance the people still alive here were beyond saving.

 

There was also the part about the ritual that he felt Dean and Sam had missed when he first said it, although he hesitated to bring it up until he absolutely had to. The ritual would require a sacrifice. A human sacrifice.

 

This would be the tricky bit. He couldn’t ask Sam or Dean to sacrifice a Human, because he already knew they wouldn’t. In fact, he could picture Dean getting very angry about this, possibly to the point of trying to punch him. So it would fall to him to do this, wouldn’t it?

 

Castiel was not looking forward to this. He didn’t exactly look forward to having to slaughter an innocent either, but he knew what was at stake here. They had to send Nyarlathotep back to his dimension. He was too dangerous to remain here. The death of one could save billions. There was no question it was the right thing to do.

 

But ...

 

This was the bad part of being around Humans so much, of feeling so much. No matter the fact that this was the right move to make, it felt terrible. It felt wrong. Before getting mixed up with Dean, he wouldn’t have believed something could be simultaneously right and wrong at the same time, and yet now his existence was defined by these two dichotomous states. Defying Heaven to help Dean and Sam was completely wrong, and yet it felt like the rightest thing he had ever done. And the fact that he was brought back to life sort of proved it, didn’t it? Or so he thought. Maybe that wasn’t true.

 

If he rebelled and was struck down, he would have understood that. That’s what faithless angels deserved. But he rebelled, was struck down, and brought back again. Ever since then, he’d been flailing a bit. He didn’t understand what was required of him, what he was supposed to do now. He hoped to find God for answers, because he desperately needed them. How could he be so wrong and so right at the same time? It made no sense.

 

Just like he knew Dean and Sam had very specific roles to play in the Apocalypse, and it was destiny. No matter what they wanted, it would happen. But they were still trying fruitlessly to fight it, and he was trying to help. Why? When he knew it would end badly. Why was he being this stupid? Was this part of his destiny?

 

Wrong. Angels didn’t have destinies per se. They had missions, roles to fill, jobs to do. They were agents of fate without true fates of their own. But even that felt wrong now.

 

Sometimes Castiel liked to imagine what would have happened if another angel broke through Hell’s front line first and pulled Dean out of Hell. He could be up in Heaven now, perhaps leader of his own garrison, preparing for the Apocalypse. Everything nice and neat, orderly, right. No doubts, no feeling lost, none of this frustrating dichotomous state. Just playing the role he had been made to play. That must have been a pure existence. He never realized how good he had it back then.

 

But another part of him recoiled at the thought of it. Pure? Sterile. Orderly? Rigid. No doubts? Incapable of thinking for oneself. He was torn in two, and wasn’t sure what to do about it. He couldn’t even talk to Dean about this, because he wasn’t sure he could understand. Castiel didn’t understand, so what hope did a Human have? He knew now he had judged Anna way too harshly, for all the good that did.

 

He was lucky, or he was simply given the easiest list (he suspected that), because Castiel managed to gather everything he was supposed to get with no trouble. He encountered no ghosts or crazed townsfolk, although he did find three corpses, in grotesquely torn and violated states. They were reasonably fresh too, so he hadn’t missed the violence by more than an hour. More of Nyarlathotep’s bloody work. This was why he needed to be banished, no matter the cost. He stared at the corpses until they were seared into his brain. He needed this to steel his resolve.

 

Castiel returned to the library first. “Yaay, one of you pretty boys made it,” Peggy said, as soon as he came in. “Assuming you’re not crazy. You’re not crazy, are you?”

 

That should not have been a poser, but somehow it was. Was that what living within two dichotomous states was? That answer felt simplistic. “No more than normal.”

 

Peggy squinted at him over her glasses. “Are all angels like you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, thank Buddha for that. Although to be honest, if you all turned out like the Michael Landon variety, I would have had to have killed you all. Nothing personal, I just can’t stand treacle.”

 

“It’s an acquired taste,” he admitted. He’d heard that about it. He’d never had treacle himself, he was simply taking it on faith.

 

She was giving him that look again. Dean had a version of it, although it was more nakedly hostile. Castiel decided it was one of consternation. “So how did you meet the other cuties exactly?”

 

Castiel dumped the items he’d collected out on the table. “I rescued Dean from Hell.”

 

She made a noise best described as a splutter. “What? He was there? Why?”

 

“He sold his soul to bring Sam back to life.”

 

She took a halting breath, which was odd for a ghost, and then raised her hand as if warding off a reaper. “Wait. Are you telling me they’ve both died?”

 

He nodded. “More than once.”

 

“How the fuck is that possible?”

 

Castiel studied the ghost, unsure if she really wanted the answer or not. “Is that rhetorical, or do you want all the details?”

 

“What about you?”

 

“What about me?”

 

“Have you died?”

 

He wasn’t sure how this helped at all. But, again, he did feel a little bad for ghosts, and while she may have been stuck in a library, she was still stuck between worlds. Castiel knew from experience that was difficult to deal with. “Yes.”

 

She bent over her desk, making a noise like she was deflating, and he might have thought there was something wrong if she was corporeal. But she was simply reacting to his words. “Son of a bitch. How come you guys get extra tickets to the opera, and I just got the one?”

 

“They have roles to play in the Apocalypse. I am unsure why I was resurrected. I have to assume my job isn’t done.”

 

Peggy straightened up, and fixed him with a glare that Dean would have been proud of. “The Apocalypse? The motherfucking Apocalypse is happening?”

 

She seemed displeased, even though, as a ghost, it wouldn’t have an effect on her terrible in-between state one way or another. “Yes. If it’s any comfort, we are trying to stop it.”

 

“You’d better be trying to stop it, Sweet Cheeks. What kind of an angel would you be if you didn’t?”

 

Castiel pondered telling her how most of the angels were all for it, but didn’t see how that would be of any help. It’d probably just make her more upset. If most people knew what angels really were like, he imagined there’d be many shattered dreams.

 

Peggy went on, apparently assuming his silence meant he agreed. “So are you Dean’s guardian angel or what?”

 

“Not exactly. I help Sam too.”

 

She leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner, elbows seemingly resting on her desk. “How are those two brothers? They look nothing alike. It’s a cover story, right?”

 

He didn’t even understand that implication. “No, they’re brothers. Sam may have been altered somewhat by his exposure to demon blood as an infant, but that isn’t always the case –“

 

“Wait, what? Demon blood?” Peggy blinked rapidly behind her glasses, as if stunned. “Holy shit. Those boys are fucking messed up, aren’t they?”

 

“Well …” How did he answer that question?

 

“That actually explains a lot. I mean, the one’s a functional alcoholic, but if he’s been killed a few times and did a stint in Hell, it’s a miracle he’s not tied down in a rubber room somewhere. Your doing, right? Divine intervention?” Castiel shook his head, but she ignored it. “And geek boy running to books so he doesn’t have to deal with being demon tainted, and dying a couple times. Makes perfect sense. No wonder they’re trying to fix the world.”

 

Castiel found himself intrigued by that statement. “What do you mean?”

 

She scoffed. “’Cause when you can’t fix yourself, you go around trying to fix everything else. Or you O.D. in a dirtbag flophouse in Vegas. One of the two. Both if you can swing it. Haven’t you studied humanity at all?”

 

Before he could admit he apparently hadn’t, the door opened, and Sam came in, breathing hard and bleeding from a cut on his cheek. Peggy turned her attention to him. “Yaay, two of you made it back. Giant Nerd and Angel Data. There’s a mismatched buddy cop team if I ever heard of one.”

 

Castiel decided to ignore this comment, mainly because he didn’t understand it. “Are you all right?”

 

Sam, who had been giving Peggy a side eyed look, changed focus and nodded. “Ran into a couple of ghosts on the way back, but nothing I couldn’t handle. You?”

 

“No trouble.” Sam had clearly downplayed his run in with the ghosts, judging from his injury and the way he was breathing, but the Winchesters were like that, so he let it go.

 

“Good.” Sam came over to the table, and put his bag down on the table. “Dean’s not back yet?”

 

Obviously he wasn’t, but Castiel recognized this as a coping mechanism, not a stupid question. “No. But he had farther to travel.”

 

Sam nodded, pulling out the items for the spell, and pretending he wasn’t worried. But he was. Castiel glanced at the clock on the wall, and wondered when they’d set out to go find him. He was a little concerned for him too.

 

He decided Dean had ten minutes to get back here, or they were going after him.

 

**

 

 

Dean just got up and went; he wasn’t too picky about direction, except away from the angry horde of ghosts. So he didn’t realize he was in a graveyard until he almost stumbled over a headstone. Son of a bitch.

 

But maybe this wasn’t so terrible. He didn’t have time to track down individuals, dig up their graves, and burn their bones, but maybe he could just freak them out a little. Was it possible to freak ghosts out?No time like the present to find out.

 

He threw salt everywhere, because he was smart enough (first time for everything) to grab some at the store. Dean also had a plastic lighter, which he broke so he could leak out the lighter fluid, and then dug out the book of matches from the last dive bar he hit before Port Windsor. It was easy enough to drop a lit match and light the grass on fire behind him.

 

He was bleeding from a hundred little cuts, and his left shoulder was molten with pain, the arm trembling and pretty much useless. He was pretty sure he’d broken at least one rib, and his back was killing him. He hoped he’d just bruised a vertebrae and didn’t crack it, ‘cause those were bitches to heal.

 

One of those ancient sailor ghosts appeared in front of him, and he shot it in the face. Because of all the rain Dean didn’t expect the grass to stay on fire once the lighter fluid ran out, but he was hoping some of the dead leaves and branches would catch, and from the crackling sound behind him, they had.

 

The wind kicked up, and had the gratifying effect of fanning the flames. He shot another ghost he saw wandering amongst the tombstones, and as he reloaded, he realized the way ahead looked clear for the moment. The salt was dissolving into the earth, and while he didn’t know if it would have any effect on ghosts standing on that ground, he imagined they wouldn’t like it much.

 

Dean found himself thrown head first into a crypt, but he managed to turn at the last second and take the brunt of the impact on his left shoulder, and the pain that surged through his body as a result made him scream. It probably would have been better to take it in the skull.

 

As he slumped down to the ground, he realized two ghosts were on him, another old time sailor, and a woman who looked very much like a stereotypical bar wench. He was able to shoot the both of them before they could do him anymore harm.

 

He was popping out the spent cartridges and replacing them – years of experience meant he could not only do this one handed, but in his sleep if he had to – when he noticed there were more of those ringed sucker marks on the wall of the crypt. He hadn’t seen any, except inside of Graham’s skull. So why had Narly emptied him out? Shits and giggles? Because he could? Because he thought it would be funny? The problem with truly evil bastards was they didn’t need a reason to do anything. They wanted to do it, so they did it. End of story. Only people with anything resembling a conscience needed a reason.

 

The fire was growing, and had spread to a dead tree, which stood sentinel in the center of the graveyard. The smoke was swirling, smelling oddly like a campfire, and the ghosts were getting lost in it. It wouldn’t really bother them, except psychically/emotionally. Or so he hoped. Otherwise he had no hope left.

 

Dean finally noticed a shadow standing near the front of the crypt, and he raised his gun, only to have the ghost raise her hands, and say, “No, wait!”

 

The first thought he had about this ghost was, sadly, she was beautiful. She had shoulder length black hair and dark eyes, a shapely figure fit into a flattering old timey red dress. She looked like she could have been a ‘40’s movie star, a femme fatale standing in Phillip Marlowe’s office, pulled out of time and plopped down here. “You still have all your marbles?” he wondered. He didn’t think his luck was that good tonight.

 

“Probably not,” she admitted, which was a remarkably sane thing to say. “But you’re a hunter, right? Can you stop it?”

 

He didn’t need to ask the “it” she was referring to. Using nothing but the power of his legs and the wall of the crypt, Dean got back up to his feet. “I’m gonna try.”

 

She tilted her head towards the crypt. “If you manage to, come back for me. My bones are in there.”

 

“You want to die?”

 

“I’m tired,” she said. “I want to go. But I know I can’t, not as long as it’s here.”

 

Dean understood that in a way he knew he shouldn’t have. Just the thought of stopping sometimes seemed like bliss. Just close your eyes and cease fighting. It was cowardly and he hated himself for it. But sometimes it sounded so good, just to rest, to let people take care of themselves for once and leave him the fuck alone. Maybe someday. Or, as he liked to tell himself in really rough moments, he’d sleep when he was dead, which couldn’t be that much longer now. “What’s your name?”

 

“Daisy.”

 

Figured. Old fashioned name. He wondered how long she had been dead and hanging around, and how she died so young. She couldn’t have been more than mid-twenties, tops. “I’ll come back for you, I promise.”

 

She studied him a moment with her dark eyes, then nodded primly, believing him. “I don’t know if I can hold any of them off for long, but I’ll try. You’d better go.”

 

“Sounds like a plan,” he said, shoving himself off the wall with his elbow. He thought he saw a low fence and gate a few dozen yards ahead, and he had no idea how far the ghosts would follow him, if they would at all. Maybe if they got distracted, it would be enough to shake them. The dead were not accustomed to roaming, not like this. Narly changed the rules a little too much. As he walked past her, he looked her in the eyes, and could see through her to the tree beyond. His heart ached a little, for her and for the crazier ghosts behind him, stalking him through the graveyard. None of them wanted to be doing any of this; it was just they had no choice. Either it was some crazy ass god or fate or whatever pulling all their strings. “Thank you.”

 

She smiled faintly, glancing down at the ground, and it was very charming. Dean suddenly got the impression she hadn’t lived much during her brief life, and that made him doubly sad for her. The shit that happened to some people just wasn’t right or fair. If he ever met Cass’s “dad”, he was going to straight up punch him in his fucking face. He didn’t care if it got him instantly smote; it’d be worth it. “Go now. Don’t forget me.”

 

“I won’t, Daisy,” he assured her, moving on. The fire was still crackling behind him, and the wood smoke smell was strong, as was the subsequent hiss of the drizzle attempting and currently failing to put out the flaming tree.

 

Dean kicked open the cemetery gate and walked through it, pausing to spit out some blood and look behind him at the fire he left in his wake. The smoke was swirling, occasionally revealing human shapes within, before they disappeared again. He couldn’t tell if there was a ghost fight going on or not, but at least for the moment, they were off his back.

 

He limped down the sidewalk, sawed off still in his hand, left arm hanging useless at his side. So, he had two more stops to make. Dean wondered if he’d survive them, and couldn’t help but chuckle at the weird hopelessness of it all. It was kind of funny, in a bleak sort of way.

 

Kind of like his life, now that he thought about it. Damn, that was depressing. But he tried to look on the bright side. Maybe the next stop would have no ghosts, and oodles of painkillers.

 

He could dream, couldn’t he?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	7. Use Your Delusion

 

**_7 – Use Your Delusion_ **

 

 

 

Sam got tired of waiting for Dean, who was running way behind, so he and Cass headed out after him.

 

“Are you crazy? You managed to get back in one piece. You’re tempting fate to go out there again, you beautiful fools,” Peggy complained, but they went anyways.

 

Once outside, Cass asked, “Why does she keep calling us beautiful?”

 

Sam didn’t know what to tell him, beyond, “She thinks we’re cute.”

 

“Hmm.”

 

Sam didn’t know what to make of that response, so he just let it go.

 

Anxiety along with hunger was twisting up his stomach, as it occurred to him about five minutes before they left that he hadn’t eaten in hours. He was pretty sure he had no appetite, especially after seeing what he had, but his stomach wasn’t listening to him. It didn’t care what bloody horrors he had seen that night, it just wanted fuel. He was sure this place had a store, but he had no idea where it was.

 

He and Cass had covered two blocks when they saw a limping figure in the darkness, coming up the road. “What, you couldn’t wait for five freaking minutes?” Dean said.

 

Sam’s relief was short lived. Dean’s limping he was willing to live with, but then he saw how messed up Dean was. He had a fistful of bleeding cuts on his face, and his left eye was half swollen and ringed with a purple and black bruise. His upper lip was split, his right cheek was swollen, and he had blood crusted under his nose. And his left arm was hanging at his side in a way that suggested his shoulder had dislocated again. “What the fuck happened to you?”

 

Dean smirked. “I wouldn’t visit the church if I were you. The ghosts congregate there.”

 

“How many did you run into?”

 

Dean pretended to think about it. “About twenty two.”

 

Sam stared at him, hoping that was a joke, but it quickly became apparent that he was not kidding. “How the hell are you still alive?”

 

Dean just shrugged his one working shoulder. “You know me, Sammy. A quick death is too good for me. They had to play with their food first.”

 

Sam took Dean’s backpack, as he was way too fucking injured to keep carrying it (but would never admit it), and Cass said, “That was hyperbole, right? Ghosts don’t eat people.”

 

“I dunno. I got the feeling these guys were considering it.” Without being asked, Cass draped Dean’s good arm over his shoulder, and Dean was so hurt he accepted the help without comment. That meant he must have been really bad. “When we send Narly-whatever the fuck away, we gotta go back to the cemetery. A ghost there helped me out, and I promised I’d burn her bones. She’s ready to leave and she can’t.”

 

“More unusual ghost behavior,” Sam noted, shouldering the pack. It was heavier than he expected it to be.

 

“What isn’t nuts in this town? Oh, and I stopped by the store and grabbed some stuff. I was hungry before I got the ass whuppin’ of the century.”

 

Good old Dean, always thinking stomach first. Unless he was thinking dick first. Dean was a creature of appetites, no doubt about that. He opened the bag as they walked, and the first thing he found was beer. No wonder the bag was so heavy.

 

“So, we good to go or what?” Dean asked.

 

Sam now realized he sounded unusually chipper considering how beaten up he was. “Are you drunk?”

 

“Oh, I wish. I’m high on painkillers.”

 

He glanced over to see Dean was giving him a goofy smile. Yep, he was. “Where’d you find those?”

 

“Oh, I passed a vet’s on the way to collecting the sulfur. I figured what the hell, you know? I was really hurtin’.”

 

“A vet’s? Goddamn it, Dean.”

 

“I know my tolerance.”

 

“What have I told you about taking animal tranqs? Especially if you insist on washing it down with beer.”

 

Dean giggled. Yeah, he was stoned out of his fucking gourd. But he probably had been in a huge amount of pain. He was going to have to tell him the story of how he survived a ghost gauntlet someday, because that must have been brutal. And if Sam was honest with himself, he might have done some horse tranquilizers after that too.

 

When they got back to the library, giddy Dean beat Peggy to the punch. “Peg, my second favorite ghost. How you doin’?”

 

“Second fav – holy crap on a cracker, who beat the shit out of you?”

 

“The Crazy 88’s ghost edition,” Dean said. Cass helped him to a chair, and he collapsed in it. Cass’s trench coat was now spotted with Dean’s blood.

 

Sam put his heavy bag on the table, and pulled out both beer and beef jerky. Well, it wasn’t ideal, but it was food. “Want me to pop your shoulder back in?”

 

“Oh, yeah. Almost forgot that was out. Toss me a beer.”

 

Sam shook his head. “I think you’ve had enough.”

 

“No way. I can still feel my toes.”

 

Peggy eyed Dean nervously. “Did he start doing heroin while he was away?”

 

“Horse tranquilizers,” Cass said.

 

“What?”

 

Sam walked over, and without warning, just popped Dean’s shoulder right in. He figured he was numb enough to take it, and he must have been, because he barely noticed it. “That’s better. Thanks, Sammy.” He moved his left hand, as if he hadn’t moved it in ages. That was possible.

 

“I’m sorry I can’t heal you,” Cass told him.

 

Dean shrugged, and grimaced, as it was still a little too early to use his left shoulder. “It’s okay. Just promise me you’ll put my ribs back together when this is all over. It’s a bitch waiting for them to heal.”

 

Peggy leaned over the counter, scowling at Dean. “You’re fucking nuts, aren’t you?”

 

Dean snickered. “Probably. Does that matter?”

 

“Nope. I think my opinion of you just went up. Even though you’re bleeding all over my carpet.”

 

Dean’s cuts looked shallow, they appeared to be mostly glass cuts, but there were a lot of them, and they seemed to be on his hands and arms as well as his face and neck. Sam took a stab in the dark. “Thrown through a window?”

 

Dean made a gun with his thumb and forefinger, and shot him as an affirmative.

 

“How many times have you been thrown through a window that you just know that?” Peggy asked.

 

“Sometimes we jump through them,” Dean volunteered, smiling.

 

Peggy shook her head. “You’re just nine kinds of crazy, aren’t you handsome? If I was alive, I’d marry you.”

 

“Why let being dead be a barrier?”

 

Holy shit, he was flirting with Peggy? Yeah, Dean was way too stoned. “You don’t happen to have a cot in the back, do you?” Sam asked, hauling Dean to his feet by his good arm. “I think he needs to sleep some of this off.”

 

“What?” Dean protested. “I’m just starting to feel decent.”

 

“There might be one, if you clear a few books off of it. But put him on his side so he doesn’t choke on his own vomit.”

 

Dean scoffed. “That’s for lightweights. Besides, if I died, we could be ghost buds.”

 

Sam patted him on the back. “Okay Romeo, let’s go.”

 

Peggy shook her head. “That must be some good shit. I’m kind of jealous I can’t have some.”

 

“Please don’t encourage him,” Sam told her. Dean smelled like blood and gunpowder, which he expected, but he didn’t expect him to smell just a little bit like wood smoke. Had he started a fire?

 

In the back room, he did find a cot, covered in books like Peggy said. Normally he’d move them carefully, but Dean could barely stand up, so he just shoved them off onto the floor, and let Dean collapse on it. “I’m good, really,” he said, even though he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

 

“Yeah, but we need you a hundred percent for the big game. So get some shut eye.”

 

Dean grunted an affirmative and rolled over onto his side, just about asleep before Sam even left the room. When he shut off the light, he noticed he had some of his blood on his arm now.

 

“Well, that was fun,” Peggy said, when he came back into the library. “How is Barfly in there still alive?”

 

“He’s remarkably resilient,” Cass said. He had unloaded the rest of Dean’s bag, so now all the ritual articles were scattered over the table like the result of the world’s most bizarre scavenger hunt.

 

“He’s a stubborn asshole,” Sam said, which was the less tactful version of that. But he did actually admire that about Dean, sometimes. For the most part, he had no quit in him. “So if we have everything for the ritual, we have to pick a time.”

 

“How about the year the Road Warrior back there regains consciousness?”

 

Sam shook his head. “Is there any time when you know when Nyarlathotep is bound to be in the harbor?”

 

Peggy stared at him like he was an idiot. “Tied to the library, Sugar Pants. Don’t get out a lot. How the hell would I know?”

 

“Do you sense him?” Cass asked.

 

She had to think about that a moment. “Kinda. I mean, he’s like a sense of dread, you know? It’s really weird, ‘cause, ghost. Not a lot of shit bugs me.”

 

“So are there ebbs and flows to this dread? A sense he’s closer or farther away?” Cass continued.

 

She stared at the table as she considered this. Finally she said, “I think it’s the quietest it ever is around here is about eight in the morning. Does that help?”

 

“Yeah, it does,” Sam said. “It gives us a few hours to prepare.”

 

Cass grimaced. “That doesn’t give us a lot of time.”

 

“So let’s get to work.” Sam figured he could drink a beer and eat some beef jerky while working. At least it was all easy to eat while busy.

 

**

 

Dean woke up feeling like he had been stomped flat, re-inflated, and exploded, then set on fire. So, it was Monday then? Maybe Tuesday.

 

He was a big ball of throbbing pain, and it took him two minutes to sit up. His back, his knee, and his shoulder all threatened to keep locking up on him. He had some more stolen painkillers in his pocket, but he knew if he took them on an empty stomach, he’d just barf them up. So he had to get up and eat first. Damn, a mob of ghosts could really deliver an efficient beat down. He was getting too old for this shit.

 

Dean finally limped out into the main room of the library, and was instantly greeted by a terrible smell that was some combination of sulfur, blood, charred bones, and slagged metal. “Been fightin’ demons while I was gone?”

 

Sam and Cass were standing at the table, where the amount of collected ingredients had been whittled down to half their volume. There was now a large jar of something polluted looking and grotesque in the center of the table that looked like something scraped out of the back of a fridge that had been locked for a year. Both Cass and Sam looked rumpled, but only Sam looked sleep deprived.

 

“I would not watch the Giant Nerd and Angel Data cooking show,” Peggy said. She was still behind the desk, but it looked like she’d pulled up a seat to watch. “Even if they made something edible.”

 

Sam stared at Dean as though startled. “How the hell do you look worse?”

 

“Thanks a lot.” All the food and beer had been relegated to a side table, so he hobbled over and plopped down in the chair beside it. Although beer and a candy bar made a shitty breakfast, he’d had worse.

 

The sun was up outside the sigil marked windows, but just barely. The sky had the weird pastel sheen it only had in either early morning or at the beginning of the sunset. Dean wolfed down a candy bar, and washed it down with a gulp of beer and a quarter of a pain pill. He just needed to get to the point where he didn’t care about the pain, then he’d be good to go. “We ready to go?” Dean asked.

 

“Just about.” Sam crushed up some leaves and added them to the jar of gunk. “Are you sure you can move? Maybe you’d better stay here.”

 

“Fuck you. I’ll be right as rain after another beer.”

 

Cass was now frowning at him in concern. “I don’t see how that helps.”

 

“You’re obviously not a functional alcoholic,” Peggy said.

 

Dean gave her the finger, which made her laugh. Dean felt a crackle in his left elbow, which was a familiar old injury. Might have gotten a hairline fracture again. When ghosts kicked you around, they weren’t fucking kidding.

 

By the time Cass and Sam got everything packed up, the pill was working, and he could move without feeling like hammered shit. He felt almost human again.

 

When they were almost out the door, Peggy asked, “What happens if it doesn’t work?”

 

Oh damn it. Dean had been hoping no one ever brought that up. Sam sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “We keep trying, until we’re too dead or crazy to care.”

 

“Or both,” Cass helpfully added. Yeah, that was a possibility too. Fun times in this burg.

 

They left the library, all their portal opening ingredients shoved in a backpack Sam was carrying, and Peggy’s farewell message was pretty succinct. “Try not to get dead, pretty boys. And send this thing back to Lovecraft.” This gave Dean a great mental picture of stuffing a train sized demon monster tentacle god into a mailing envelope. Okay, maybe two beers wasn’t the best idea with the pill.

 

It was a nice day. Overcast, sure, but not currently raining, which was something. But it was so eerily quiet Dean felt the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. Everything was so peaceful it was wrong. He was expecting ghosts to pop out of everywhere any second now.

 

He just needed to wait one block. That’s how far they got before they turned down the street, and found a mob of about a dozen people just standing in the center of the road, as if waiting for them.

 

They were people, too, not ghosts. Ten men, two women, and the one woman out front was tearing out handfuls of her own hair, making blood trail down her face. They all had weapons of some kind. No guns, but generally improvised weapons: axes, baseball bats, mauls, hammers. Dean almost asked where the torches and pitchforks were, but thought better of it.

 

The leader of the group was a big bald guy with shoulders like a linebacker and a fireman’s ax. “You brought it here, didn’t you?” he snarled.

 

Sam held up his hands. “Don’t know what you mean.”

 

“Liar!” Bloody faced woman snapped, pulling out another hank of her own hair. It looked like she took a bit of scalp with it too, but if she was feeling any pain, it wasn’t showing.

 

“If we kill you, it goes away,” another man said. He had an aluminum baseball bat. “He said so.”

 

“Who’s he?” Sam asked.

 

There was no answer, and they weren’t really expecting one. They all had the glazed eyed looks of the insane, looking at them and through them at the same time, here but somewhere else too.

  
“You’re suffering from delusions,” Cass said, as relentlessly logical as always. And there couldn’t be a worse time for that. “Nyarlathotep has gotten into your heads. It’s regrettable, but you must know this isn’t true.”

 

The guy with the baseball bat stared at Cass like he was an alien. “He’s not human,” he said, wide eyed with fear.

 

Goddamn it. Dean stepped in front of Cass, shoving him behind him. “This doesn’t have to get ugly, okay? We’re on our way out, so just let us leave. Cool?”

 

The woman at the back had a sledgehammer, and she let it fall to the asphalt, where it left cracks in the pavement. She was holding the handle as lightly as a cane. How strong was she? “They hafta die. It’s the only way this ends.”

 

Shit. He and Sam shared a regretful look. This was going to get so nasty before it ever got any better. “Please don’t make me kill you,” Dean asked, and he meant it. He didn’t want to kill any of these people. They were trying to save them!

 

Bald guy snorted like a bull. “Big talk for a walking wound.”

 

“Please, just let us pass,” Sam said, trying one more time. “We can make it go away. No one has to get hurt.”

 

Turned out, that was the wrong thing to say. A suburban soccer dad at the back with a hammer pointed at Sam like he was in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. “He just admitted it! They brought it here!”

 

Fuck. “Aim to wound, not to kill,” Dean muttered. They all knew it, but he felt the need to brand it into his own brain. If he went pure reflex, things could get ugly fast. That was the problem with being a hunter most of your life. You weren’t accustomed to fighting plain old humans.

 

They didn’t exactly have a plan, but they were twelve people on three, and they didn’t need one. Bald Guy swung the axe at Dean’s face, and Dean ducked it, while also grabbing the handle of the axe and wresting it from his hands. He then slammed the butt of the axe back in Baldo’s face, breaking his nose in a gush of blood and making him stagger.

 

Bat Guy went for Sam, and while Sam grabbed the bat and ripped it out of his hand, Hammer Dad took that second to smash Sam in the arm. He let out a grunt of pain and staggered back, but at the same time swung the bat and clocked Hammer Time right in the face, sending him sprawling to the street.

 

A guy with a hatchet and the woman with the bloody face, who had a hammer too, went for Cass at roughly the same time, and almost collided with each other. Cass jumped back to avoid the hatchet swing, but then grabbed the man’s arm and twisted, breaking it with a cold, clean snap. He staggered back screaming, and while the bloody faced woman swung the hammer, he ducked under the swing and came up, close enough to grab her and give her a solid head butt that made her collide with Hatchet Man, and they went down in a tangle of limbs and weapons. So the suburban mob had weapons and numbers, but they had no experience. Dean felt this gave them an edge they could exploit.

 

A guy came at Sam with a maul, but Dean stamped on his leg from the side, breaking the knee with a loud crack. He went down shrieking. But by paying attention to the attack on Sam, he’d been distracted.

 

Which was why the sledgehammer swinging towards his face was such a surprise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	8. Staring At The Sun

 

**_8 – Staring At The Sun_ **

 

 

Dean had braced himself to take the sledgehammer blow on his raised left arm – Cass was going to heal him as soon as possible, right? – when Sam yanked him back in the nick of time, and the sledgehammer came smashing down to the street in front of him, just barely missing his foot.

 

Dean kicked Sledgehammer Lady in the face, and briefly considered taking it up himself. It would disable a lot of people quickly, but it would also be too damn easy to kill someone with it. So he kicked the handle until it snapped, and took up the handle as a weapon. The sledgehammer head was still available if anyone wanted to use it as a weapon, but the handle was a stub, so to use it you’d have to get in close, making yourself an easy target. It wasn’t meant to be a close combat weapon.

 

Someone grabbed him from behind, trying to choke him, but Dean just threw the guy over his back, and ended up accidentally throwing him into Sledgehammer Lady, who’d rallied for another charge.

 

Sam put soccer dad down with a brutal upper cut, and Cass broke the leg of an axe wielder with an efficient kick. It was one of those little moments that reminded him that Cass was indeed a soldier, and actually, if you thought about it, a killing machine for God. Dean didn’t know why this constantly escaped his memory. Maybe because he had a hard time thinking of Cass as a killing machine in any respect. Either he thought of Cass as the angel who wasn’t as dickish as the rest of them (mostly), or his really strange friend.

 

He felt a dull pain in his side, and lashed out blindly with an elbow, catching some asshole right in the jaw. It turned out the guy was trying to stab him with a big ass kitchen knife, which looked impressive, but was so thin and so dull it had barely broken his skin.

 

Dean quickly ran out of people to hit. Everyone was sprawled out on the street, either unconscious or too injured to fight. Only he, Cass, and Sam were left standing. “Son of a bitch,” Dean said, grabbing his small knife wound. It kind of hurt, but dull knives could do that. Some knives could be so sharp you’d never feel them; the other end of the spectrum sucked. “Everybody okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Sam said, his voice betraying a little pain. He was shaking the arm that got hit with the hammer. It didn’t look broken, but it could have been.

 

“It’s not a serious wound,” Cass said. That was alarming. 

 

Dean looked, and it turned out he got nicked with an axe in the upper arm. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it was bleeding a bit. Sam found a bandana in his pack, and they wrapped it around Cass’s arm. He lost a bit of blood, but he could use the arm just fine, so it was all good. Dean felt a little trickle of blood down his side from the knife wound, but he mostly just noticed it because it was itchy. Nothing major.

 

They continued on to the waterfront, and now Dean was paranoid for people and ghosts. He kept an eye out for both, but they got a bit of luck, and managed to skate by. For the moment. 

 

At the shore, they spread out the foul smelling goop and sketched weird, arcane symbols across the sand. Sam and Cass did the more elaborate, strange ones, which was fine by Dean. He kept looking out at the water, wondering if Narly would come out now, and what they would do if they did. Every now and again he thought he’d see something out of the corner of his eye, which disappeared when he looked at it, making him worry they were due for another ghost attack.

 

Cass must have noticed him looking around so much, because he came over and said, quietly, “We’re close to Nyarlathotep. You may be experiencing some delusions of your own. Do you best to ignore them.”

 

Fantastic. So the ghosts he thought he kept seeing were all in his head? That was simultaneously good and bad. If real ghosts showed up, he would be the last to know.

 

Also spread along the shore was crushed up charcoal, which struck Dean as weird, but according to Cass the Old Ones generally didn’t like it. So no barbeques for them. Too bad, they were missing out. They also needed open flames, so they piled up a couple of tiny pyres of kindling (and charcoal – hey, why not?), and set them alight. It was the weirdest beach party ever.

 

They were just about done, save for the words, which were long and weird. Dean had the Latin words, Sam had the Arabic words, and Cass had the weirder, Cuneiform like ones Sam and Dean both had no idea how to read, nonetheless say. And why this long spell required three languages was beyond him. Someone set out to make opening a portal to the Old One’s dimension as difficult as possible. (Although apparently not difficult enough.)

 

Cass turned and started walking up the shore, until Dean grabbed his arm and stopped him. “Hey, where you goin’? Aren’t we ready here?”

 

Cass looked at him with the slightest frown. He had a look in his eye that Dean knew was the angel version of grim determination. “We need one more thing for the spell.”

 

“What?” Sam asked, looking at the pages of the spell in his hand. “I thought we had everything.”

 

“No.” Dean saw the wariness in Cass’s expression, and just tilted an eyebrow at him. It was enough. Dean saw him break before he spoke. “The only way to open the portal to the Old One’s dimension is a human sacrifice.”

 

“What?” Dean replied.

 

“What?” Sam also said, although with more anger. “No. Why the hell didn’t you mention that before?”

 

“I did. I said the man who jumped off the lighthouse was probably a sacrifice to open the portal. I thought that was clear.”

 

Sam threw his hands in the air, incensed. “We can’t do this. We have to think of another way.”

 

“I can just grab one of the people we fought,” Cass said. “They’re probably beyond saving anyway.” Cass started walking again, but Dean gripped his arm tight and pulled him back.

 

“If it’s human blood we need, I know where the doctor’s clinic is,” Dean told him. He was angry at him for not making this clearer earlier, but the painkiller was keeping it at a kind of remove. It was actually pleasant to have some distance from his emotions. He got tired of fighting them after a while. A strategic détente was kind of nice.

 

Cass shook his head, giving him a look Dean had long ago labeled frustrated and confused in a very specific, angry angel way. They had their own muted emotional palette, no matter their denial of having emotions. It was simply different than the Human ones. “It isn’t a question of blood, Dean. A Human soul needs to die to open the portal. There is no equivalent to that.”

 

“Cass, it’s out of the question,” Sam said, shoving the spell in his pocket. “We’re gonna hafta think of something else.”

 

Now it was Cass’s turn to be angry. He turned, breaking Dean’s hold on his arm. “There is nothing else. We can’t kill him. We can’t even fight him. This entire town will be damned for eternity unless we do this. There is no other way.”

 

Sam shook his head, and he got that stubborn look on his face. It was the same stubborn look he had when he was five, just transferred to an older canvas. “We’re just going to hafta find one.”

 

“How?” Cass insisted. “We are simply lucky that Nyarlathotep hasn’t decided to expand his reach. What happens when he does? This dimension is in dire peril. I am sorry, Sam. I don’t want to do this either. But there is no other way.”

 

Cass turned, and Sam started walking up the shore. Dean grabbed Cass’s arm again, and stilled him. If he had his angel powers, he could have shaken him off easily, but he didn’t.

 

And Dean got this completely. Cass was right, but Sam was also right. They had to do this, there was no other way, but it was too much. They couldn’t sentence some poor bastard to death, even if his brain was now a heap of broken glass. That wasn’t what they did. They came here to save people, not kill them. And while killing one to save everyone else didn’t seem like too much to ask, it felt like it was. Hadn't these people paid enough already? In blood and horror and death. It was too much to ask them to sacrifice one more. 

 

Dean met Cass’s eyes with a steady, serious glance, and asked, “You’re gonna heal me, right? First thing?”

 

For a moment, Cass looked annoyed, but Dean saw the second he got what he was really asking him. It wasn’t so much understanding that bloomed in his eyes, but horror. “Yes. But Dean –“

 

“Countin’ on you, Cass. Don’t let me down.” Dean said, and pulled out his .45.

 

Dean spared a glance at Sam, who saw him, and started to run. “No! Dean –“

 

But that was the last thing Dean heard, as he put the gun up against the side of his own head, and pulled the trigger.


	9. God's Away On Business

 

**_9 – God’s Away On Business_ **

 

Sam did not know who he was supposed to ask for a moratorium on watching his brother die violently in front of him, but he definitely wanted to appeal to somebody. This was insane.

 

The “mystery spot” nonsense? Bad. Watching Dean get torn to pieces by a Hellhound while he could only stand by helplessly and watch?The worst feeling in the world. He still had nightmares about that.

 

But this. Holy fucking hell, Dean just committed suicide in front of him. What tipped Sam’s one second warning? Probably the look in Dean’s eye, the one he always had before he did something reckless and crazy, and of course his gun. Not the one with rock salt, the one with live ammo. He’d have asked why he even brought that, except of course Dean had about a half dozen weapons on him at all times. He felt naked without them.

 

It was just so fast. Sam saw him put the gun up to his head, and he gave him a look that may have been a kind of apology, and then there was the gunshot, and Dean’s brains all over the beach. It seemed to take one second.

 

Cass, being closer, caught Dean’s body before it hit the ground, but even he had not been fast enough to stop him from firing the shot. Sam felt that like a punch in the gut, and he had to stop and put his hands on his knees, to both catch his breath and ride out a wave of intense nausea. He was crying, he supposed, but he didn’t care. “You motherfucker!” he shouted, even though Dean couldn’t possibly hear it now.

 

Cass looked shocked. He still wasn’t accustomed to all of Dean’s impulsive moves. He knelt down on the beach, lowering Dean’s body with great care, even though he was no longer alive enough to appreciate it. “I will bring him back,” he said. Was resurrection in Cass’s personal power set? He supposed they were all going to find out.

 

“You damn well better,” he said, wiping tears away with the back of his hand. He didn’t mean to sound angry at Cass. It was just Dean wasn’t here to get the ass kicking he so richly deserved. If … _when_ Cass brought him back, he was going to punch him into next Tuesday.

 

Cass dug Dean’s part of the spell out of his coat pocket, and began to cast it, pressing on like a good soldier, even though he looked paler than Sam had ever seen him. No one had expected Dean’s reaction, maybe not even Dean.

 

Sam pulled out his own part of the spell – two pages of the stuff – and started to read, blinking back tears. He didn’t actually know much Arabic, he’d just picked up random bits and pieces along the way, but from what he could tell, this spell was all about calling down “unholy darkness”, which sounded worrisome. But right now he’d do almost anything to get Cass his powers back.

 

About half the page down, he noticed the wind was starting to pick up, cold and scouring, while the water started to chop. It looked like there was a small vortex in the center of the harbor, kicking up a froth of white foam. The thought that this might actually work left Sam feeling better than he had since Dean had blown his brains out.

 

But then Sam noticed the ghosts on the waterfront.

 

They were starting to gather in their dozens, all ages, all genders, from fresh to too old to believe. Sam had laid down a salt line farther up the shore, but with the wind kicking up, it might not last long, and there was no telling if it would hinder them anyway. Shit. He wished there was a way to speed up the spell, but there wasn’t.

 

When Sam looked up from the spell again, the ghosts were closer. There had to have been at least forty of them. They were fucked if the salt line didn’t hold.

 

Suddenly he saw one of the corner of his eye and jumped, but that was only the first shock. The second shock was it was Dean.

 

He might have made fun of him for it if he was looking at him, but he wasn’t. He was looking up the shore at the other ghosts. Sam’s heart trip hammered, but why was he so surprised? Of course Dean would be a ghost. Everyone who died here was trapped by Nyarlathotep. He was no more immune from that than anyone else.

 

Dean finally looked at him, and said, “Sorry.”

 

Sam stopped the spell long enough to hiss at him, “You motherfucking bastard.”

 

Dean just shrugged. “Worked, didn’t it?” He looked back at the ghosts, who were drifting closer, and shouted, “Remember me? Wanna go for another round?”

 

The ghosts actually seemed to pause, and Dean grinned at them. It hadn’t even occurred to Sam that since Dean had survived his first run in with the ghost army, they might remember him. And also, now that he was a ghost, the fight was on a more even footing. Assuming Dean knew how to do ghost shit. But if it was fight and revenge related, Sam bet Dean would figure it out real fast. That was his wheelhouse. Maybe Dean killing himself wasn’t as stupid as it seemed.

 

“I got this,” Dean said, walking up the beach. “Keep going.”

 

Sam still longed to have a regular brother, but now and again, Dean’s weirdness really paid off.

 

The vortex in the water became larger and more violent as he and Cass chanted the spell, and Sam really didn’t get a chance to keep an eye on the ghosts, but last he checked, they had stopped advancing. Was it the salt line, Dean, or both? He didn’t know, and didn’t much care. As long as it kept working.

 

The whole harbor was a swirl of violent energy, and they started to hear a noise that was hard to define. It was like a constant low grumble, the sound of a rock slide or an avalanche, but one that never crested or got any closer, one that never stopped. Beneath the water, something was churning, and it was not the vortex. Sam began to see colors just beneath the surface, the cyanotic blue of a choking victim, the livid green of long decay. Nyarlathotep, finally aware someone was trying to flush him from this dimension.

 

Tentacles began to splash in the water, ones as big as double decker buses, as if trying to hold back or still the vortex. Both Cass and Sam were shouting now, trying to break through the constant rumble, as dark clouds massed overhead. The wind had come up even stronger now, a gale threatening to blow them away.

 

Before Sam knew what was happening, one of those monstrous tentacles shot out towards him, too fast for him to move, but just as he braced himself for the hit (and what else? What did it feel like to have your sanity just snap?), he went flying sideways and crashed to the sand (right on his hurt arm), just as the tentacle slammed down where he had been. Where Dean was now, unaffected by it, as he was already dead. “Gonna have to do better than that, Narlybone,” Dean taunted him, as the tentacle passed through him harmlessly, pulled back into the violently churning harbor.

 

Sam kept chanting, as the end of the spell was in sight now. He was going to rely on Dean to keep him from protected from whatever came his way. He protected him life, and was still doing so in death. That was kind of touching. Weird, but touching.

 

What looked like a disc of black light seemed to open up above the water vortex. It started Frisbee sized but was currently mirroring the size of the whirlpool, which could have swallowed a cruise ship without making a ripple.

 

While Sam was trying to concentrate on the final words of the spell, he couldn’t help but notice there was something moving inside that black disc of light. He couldn’t tell what, he got sense of shape or size, just a furtive, almost constant movement, like black tentacles hidden within that space, questing for its brother. Sam shuddered, and it was with a bone deep revulsion. You could almost feel the evil coming out of it like a wave of arctic air.

 

There was one last thing he had to do. While Cass shouted the final words of the spell, Sam got out his knife and cut his palm open, because of course fresh Human blood was the final ingredient to this spell. Blood magic was the most powerful, although apparently soul magic left it in the dust.

 

Sam cut his hand open, hissing at the pain, and the wind was now too powerful for him to bear, so he stayed on the sand and held his hand out over the water, letting his blood hit the churning surf. He was aware Dean was right beside him, in case Nyarlathotep made a final grab for him. Ghosts were apparently faster than Old Gods. Having no drag co-efficient probably helped.

 

As his blood was absorbed by the water, that weird, constant noise suddenly ramped up, and he could feel it in his chest, like a booming bass amplifier at a rock concert. It was making his ribcage and spine vibrate with a thunderous energy that was massive and frightening. Nothing of this word could make/project a sound like that. It felt like it was going to break the earth apart beneath him.

 

The water vortex suddenly formed into a funnel, and it met the black opening mirroring it above, and when it did, there was a shockwave that sent Sam flying several feet. He crashed down hard, feeling an impact shock of pain through his spine as a wind that was equal parts hot and cold blew past him at sub-sonic speeds. For a second, he felt a pressure on his chest that wouldn’t let him breathe.

 

And then, suddenly, the pressure was gone, and all was silence. Sam panted for breath, and wondered if his eardrums had burst and left him deaf, but then he was aware he could hear the soft sound of water lapping up against the distant pier. He laid on his back, looking up, and saw the bank of dark clouds were gone, replaced by wispy gray clouds that were now giving way to sunlight.

 

Sam couldn’t help it. He started laughing. He was aware now that he had always felt a kind of suffocating dread in this town, but hadn’t really noticed it until it was gone. And it was gone. That invisible weight was lifted from his shoulders. Nyarlathotep had been booted home.

 

He raised his fist in triumph, and hoped someday this was a footnote in Winchester history: ”First and only people to defeat Old One”. Okay, banishment wasn’t the same as killing, but he’d take it. When it came to Old Ones, you had to take your victories wherever you could grab them.

 

He sat up, surprised Dean hadn’t added some colorful profanity to the proceedings, but he was gone. In fact, it looked like the entire ghost army had disappeared. Sam looked down the beach to find Cass kneeling beside Dean’s body, hands on his head. “Is he alive?” Sam asked, scrambling to his feet and hastily joining them. The arm that took both the hammer hit and the weight of impact was hurting like a motherfucker, but pain meant he was alive, right? More than Dean could say right now.

 

Cass was bent over Dean, eyes closed in concentration, and Sam knew then something was wrong. It usually didn’t take any time at all to heal them. Maybe resurrection was different, but he didn’t know.

 

Sam almost asked what was wrong, but kept his mouth shut. It wasn’t like there was anything he could do to help anyway. All he could do was stand there and feel slightly sick.

 

After an almost interminable amount of time, Dean gasped explosively, eyes flying open in surprise.

 

Cass slumped back, looking strangely enervated. “If there’s ever a next time, try to leave your gray matter intact,” Cass said.

 

Dean rolled over onto his side, looking a little disoriented but surprisingly okay for a guy whose brains still decorated part of the beach. “Right, go for the throat slit,” Dean said. He picked up his fallen gun, because of course that would be his first move, and then he looked at Sam. “We win?”

 

“Yeah, we did.” And then, certain Dean was okay, he gave him a punch in the shoulder as soon as he sat up. He pulled it a little, even though Cass had cleaned up all his injuries.

 

“Ow! What the hell? I was just dead, you son of a bitch.”

 

“That’s for shooting yourself in the fucking head, asshole. Don’t ever do that again. I’m tired of watching you die.”

 

Dean rubbed his shoulder, frowning. “Yeah, okay. For the record, I’m tired of watchin’ you die.”

 

“Great. So we have to make a pact to stop dying.”

 

“Am I included in this?” Cass asked.

 

Dean held out his hand, and after looking at it for a second, Cass grabbed it. “Course you are. If you’re stupid enough to keep throwin’ your lot in with us, you’re an honorary Winchester.”

 

This actually made Cass smile, and Sam wondered how the world had ever got so low as to depend on the three of them to constantly save it. But hey, give them credit. They hadn’t done too badly so far.

 

Now they just needed to keep going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	10. Ego Death

 

**_10 – Ego Death_ **

 

 

Dean was kind of sorry he didn’t remember being dead. All he could remember was shooting himself in the head, which he recalled more as noise than pain, and then suddenly he was waking up on the beach, with Cass leaning over him and Sam standing back watching, his worried face on.

 

According to Sam, he kept the ghosts at bay, and it was nice to know he contributed beyond being dead. According to Cass, that was how it usually was, memories being incompatible between states and whatever the hell. Probably him shooting himself in the head had not helped either.

 

Cass also told him he wasn’t sure he could bring him back, and Dean shouldn’t have taken the risk. But Dean figured even if Cass failed, Zachariah would probably kick him back to life, if only to torment him some more. What is a cat without a mouse to play with? So it really wasn’t that big a risk. Even when he did it, Dean didn’t believe he’d be dead very long, not with the Apocalypse coming up.

 

The ghost problem in town had lessened considerably. Without Narly keeping every dead person around, many disappeared. But a few were still sticking around, so they had decisions to make.

 

Peggy, for example. She was still at the library when they returned, and it was her choice as to whether or not they burned her bones. She was buried in the same cemetery as Daisy, so they wouldn’t have to go out of their way. Truth be told, he was going to miss the old gal no matter what she chose. She was a hell of a lot of fun.

 

But Sam wasn’t quite as ready to forgive him, which was fair enough. He did kill himself after all. That night, when they hit the cemetery, Sam was still on him about it. “You couldn’t have even discussed the possibility for like three minutes?” Sam asked. He was digging up the grave of one Robert Ogden, a particular nasty ghost who was still haunting the church, while Dean was busting into Daisy’s crypt. It looked as if the flames hadn’t spread beyond the dead tree, but that was fine. It added even more spooky ambiance to the graveyard.

 

Castiel was back at the library, as it was generally decided someone should be with Peggy at the end. Considering all the help she’d given them, it was only right.

 

“You wouldn’t have let me,” Dean admitted, popping open the door of the crypt. The air was so stale, he had a feeling it hadn’t been opened since the last body was interred here. Which was, according to the dates, 1962.

 

“Fuck yeah I wouldn’t have let you,” Sam agreed, as his shovel hit wood. ”Dean, that was crazy. I don’t care how much you think Zachariah wouldn’t have let you stayed dead. That was …” he sighed heavily, and Dean was glad he couldn’t see his face, because he could imagine the frowny face he was giving him. “Is there something you need to talk about?”

 

“I’m not suicidal, Sam.” He found Daisy’s remains, which were pretty much just bones now. Her name had been Daisy Castor. She died in 1951 at the age of 23. He poured salt on her remains, and whispered, “Goodbye, Daisy.” A splash of lighter fluid, and then he tossed a lit match in, watching her bones catch and burn. He’d been hoping to see her once more, but maybe it was better he didn’t.

 

When Dean exited the crypt, he found Sam had already torched Ogden, as there was a nice little fire going at the bottom of his grave. They had ghost banishment down to a science now. Sam was standing beside the grave, and gave him a deeply skeptical look, the flames reflecting in his eyes. “Says the guy who didn’t hesitate to shoot himself in the head this morning.”

 

He sighed impatiently, and started searching the tombstones for the next grave. “I knew I’d be back. Why did some poor son of a bitch have to die and stay dead when I knew if I died, I’d be back? It made sense, Sam.”

 

Sam scoffed, but Dean wasn’t going to take the bait. He knew he wasn’t going to stay dead when he did it, and that was the truth.

 

Was there some small part of him that wouldn’t have been disappointed if that wasn’t true? If he stayed dead and never had to find out if Sammy said yes to Lucifer, or if he’d have to fight his own brother to death? Sure. But he’d be fucked if he ever admitted that. Dean wasn’t even completely ready to admit that to himself. He was afraid, just based on a look he gave him, that Cass knew, but he figured if he didn’t ask, he could pretend that wasn’t true. Sometimes denial was your friend.

 

Okay, yeah, not healthy. But Dean figured the time for worrying about what was healthy had long passed him by.

 

Finally his flashlight found the gravestone of one Elizabeth Barwick, also known as Peggy. There was a hunter’s symbol in the lower corner of the marker, almost hidden by overgrown grass. Sam came up beside him, and they studied it for a moment. It didn’t tell them a lot. She died in ‘83, at the age of sixty eight, and she seemed to be alone. There was no sign of any other family anywhere around her. Dean didn’t expect to be buried, not like this, but he imagined his gravestone would be the same way. Maybe Sam would be close by; maybe not. It would be an empty stone that told you nothing about the person who died trying their very best to save the world from monsters few knew existed. Nobody became a hunter for recognition; that wasn’t the point. The point was the end came for everybody eventually, and for hunters especially, it seemed like the loneliest thing in the world. It occurred to him, in retrospect, dying with Sam and Cass there hadn’t been too bad. At least he wasn’t alone.

 

Sam sighed. “Should we get started?”

 

“Yeah.” Dean got out his shovel, and both he and Sam started digging up her grave. They took their time, though.

 

When they were about half way down, Dean said, “Oh, heard from the bartender.”

 

“Sailor ghosts?”

 

“Still there. He wants us to get rid of them.”

 

He looked up and grinned. “We’re actually gonna burn down a bar?”

 

“I figured we can do it just before we get out of town. That way we’ll be long gone if anyone wants to investigate.”

 

“Sounds like a plan,” Sam agreed.

 

They dug in silence for a couple more minutes, and Dean was glad for it. He really wasn’t thrilled with the way his mind was working right now. He was telling himself they could avert the Apocalypse, that he and Sam wouldn’t fight each other, and Lucifer wasn’t going to take over Sam, but he wasn’t sure he believed it. But shouldn’t he? They got rid of a fucking Old One, and that was near impossible. If they’d done one impossible thing, they could do another. Dean knew if he reminded himself of this enough, he would begin to believe it.

 

Finally their shovels hit wood, and they opened her casket to find her remains. They were mostly bones too, although it looked like there was a scrap of a dark blue dress. He and Sam stood at the side of her grave for a moment, still in no hurry to do this. But she’d decided she’d hung around long enough, and with Narly gone, there was no longer any reason for her to stay. She wanted to see what was on the other side, and she’d earned that.

 

Dean took a swig from his flask, and poured a little out for Peggy. Sam got out the salt and scattered it over her bones, while Dean swapped his flask for the lighter fluid, and splashed it around her coffin.

 

Sam pulled out a disposable lighter and flicked it on, but he just held it for a moment, not ready to let it go. They both hated to do this, but it was what she wanted, and it was what she deserved too. She’d seen her final job to the end. No hunter could ask for more. “Rest well, Peggy,” Sam said, finally dropping the lighter. The flames caught easily, and they just stood there a moment longer as her bones burned. Dean imagined Sam was thinking the same thing he was, that someday, if they weren’t burned immediately after death, this could be them.

 

They had just turned to leave the graveyard when Cass was suddenly there with them. He looked somber, and didn’t say anything, but they all knew: Peggy was gone. He’d been a good angel and was with her until the end. “I don’t suppose you know if she gets a spot in Heaven or not,” Dean asked, mostly just curious.

 

“She asked me the same thing,” Cass admitted. “She helped us get rid of Nyarlathotep. Of course she has a place in Heaven.”

 

“I shudder to think of what her Heaven would look like,” Sam said, trying to lighten the mood.

 

“I’m thinking a shit ton of male strippers,” Dean said.

 

“In a library?” Cass wondered.

 

That was such a funny mental image Dean couldn’t help but chuckle. “Probably, yeah, knowing her.”

 

They started walking back to the Impala, Cass tagging along. He was probably going to go off on his God search again, although Dean wished him luck. He still wanted to punch him someday.

 

As they loaded the shovels and salt back into the trunk, Dean told Cass, “We have one more stop to make before we leave. Wanna come?”

 

“Why would I?”

 

“Ever burn down a bar?”

 

Now that got Cass’s attention. “Why are you burning down a bar?”

 

“Gotta come along to find out,” Sam said, opening the passenger side door. By the time Sam got in, Cass was in the back seat, waiting.

 

Yeah, just like he thought. Even Cass couldn’t resist arson time at a bar. “Is this somehow ghost related, or are you embarking on a life of crime?” Cass asked, as Dean got in the driver’s seat.

 

“Embarking? Where have you been?” Dean teased, starting the car.

 

There was no time to lose. They had an Apocalypse to stop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always been sorry Supernatural hasn't tackled the Cthulhu mythos in any meaningful way. It's dark and fun, but undoubtedly would raise a number of challenges, because those gods are generally deathless and extremely powerful, as well as crazymaking and bloody as hell. So I decided to try and tackle it myself, in a way that might work. I hope this did.


End file.
